


Take A Memo.

by Vixx2pointOh



Series: Take A Memo universe [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - BDSM, Anal Fingering, Anal Plug, Anal Sex, Bondage, Boss/Employee Relationship, CEO!Oliver, Chastity Device, Colleagues with Kinky Benefits, Complete, Dirty Proposal, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, F/M, Face-Fucking, Felicity calling Oliver 'Pet' Kink, Felicity doesn't Babble, Felicity isn't a wallflower she is a Storm, Friends With Benefits, Girls Kissing, Ice Play, It got a plot, Masturbation, Object Kink, Oral Sex, Origin Story, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Public Nudity, Public Sex, Secretary!Felicity, Secrets, Sex Club, Sexual Fantasy, Shameless Smut, Switching, Voyeurism, Wax Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-23 18:12:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 120,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11407818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vixx2pointOh/pseuds/Vixx2pointOh
Summary: It had been on the night of the office Christmas Party when Oliver learned a sensual secret about his seemingly-quiet Executive Assistant Felicity, that was the same night she became something much more.Shameless secretary smut AU with a large helping of Dom/Sub/Switch and a kink club for good measure.*Complete*





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo....  
> I wrote this because of a gif. That's really it.
> 
> Thanks to Sau for the encouragement :)

**February 2014**

Oliver ran a tired hand through his cropped hair remembering, when he felt short spikes where there had once been more length, that he had clippered the same a few days earlier. A heavy stroke down his jaw suggested that could use a tending to and he made a mental note to see Gerald, his dedicated hair stylist who would, it seemed, rather die than see Oliver sporting “homeless chic scruff” as he called it in his thick Kentucky accent.

It was quarter past eleven, a ridiculous hour to still be in the office pouring over papers his eyes were too tired to focus on. Twinkled lights of other office workers burning the midnight oil covered the city scape he could see from the 69th floor of the Queen Consolidated Tower.

His eyes were drawn to the oak panelled door cracked barely an inch open as a familiar sound honed his senses. He sucked in air and smiled, creamy rich lavender soap touched in tiny wisps against his nostrils.

 _Tap, tap, tap-tap._  
That was the sound of at least 3 inch heels against a marbled floor.  
Specifically that was the sound of _her_ 3 inch heels against a marbled floor, because every third tap was a double one. He would know, he had memorized it by now.

He leaned over the glass desk, his loosened tie stroking against it and whipping up deliciously hedonistic ideas. Shaking them from his head he pressed the intercom button and waited.

“Yes Mister Queen?” came the soft, almost musical response from his young EA  
Young at least compared to the grey-haired majority of the senior secretarial pool.  
“Felicity,” her name almost growled from his lips and he coughed lightly to adjust the tone of it, “I need you to take a memo.”  
“Yes Mister Queen, I’ll be in shortly.”

He heard the shuffle of her chair and the flutter of a few papers.

It only took her five minutes before the _tap, tap, tap-tap_ grew closer and halted outside his door. Five excruciating long minutes if you were to ask Oliver.

  
A meek tap on the door like always, this despite the fact she knew his office was empty of other workers given she sat right outside and despite the fact he had, only five minutes ago, asked her to come in. Still, there was something endearing about the gesture and he had grown both accustomed and fond of it.

“Come in Miss Smoak,” he rasped before clearing his throat

The door opened slowly but without a creak.  
_Tap, tap, tap-tap_  
Felicity walked in and closed the door behind herself, so gently that the click of the lock was barely heard.

“You wanted to see me Mister Queen?” she spoke, her voice like velvet to his ears  
Oliver wet his lips with three deliberately slow swipes of his tongue as his eyes focused on those shoes; black patent leather pumps, no strap, softly pointed toe.

He liked those ones.

His eyes wandered up her legs, black stockings, plain.  
That was a shame he liked the ones with the softly embossed pattern of vines, it made him feel like Jack, with his very own tantalising beanstalk to climb growing up her leg.

Mid thigh the stockings darkened into a band of satin, threaded with a thin ivory ribbon.  
These ones were new. A nice surprise.

Suspenders sunk in against her upper thighs, clipped to a garter of shimmering black satin trimmed with whimsically thin lace which sheathed flimsy sheer black panties he could absolutely tear with his teeth if he so wished it.

His hauntingly blue eyes roamed further up, tracing the soft and supple curves of her stomach and clinched waist until they reached her breasts.

Pert, a perfect size for hands like his own, tipped with nipples that looked like budded pink roses, to the point he could no longer walk the gardens at his parents’ estate without getting an erection from unopened pink roses.

He lingered there for a few moments until he continued his path upward, his cock straining against the tailored midnight blue Hugo Boss pants.

Her collarbone was glistened with moisturizer, a soft shimmer which looked like a perfectly thin veil of sweat, but it wasn’t, not just yet.

Her neck, ethereal and smooth, swept into lightly blushed cheeks.

Lips painted a fresh coat of red stayed parted. Good. He always enjoyed that colour.

Eyes behind two-toned glasses stared, unflinching, across the room at him. She didn’t retreat from his gaze.

“Mister Queen?” she hummed through those slightly parted lips  
_Right_. He had admired long enough.

“I would like you to tie my hands behind my back and do _whatever_ you want to take me as close to orgasm as possible, without letting me find release,” he instructed as he stood and threaded the tie from around his neck.

“That game again Mister Queen?” she smiled, a beautifully sinful twisted smile of delight and Oliver returned the same as he dropped the silk tie onto the desk and cupped his hands behind his back.

“Safe word?” she asked as she weaved towards him in a away of hips  
“Memo,” he huffed, “as always,” he added with a strangled voice of anticipation  
“Very well,” she winked

 _Tap, tap, tap-tap_  
She was behind him now and Oliver thought back to the moment he learned the most sensual of secrets about his timidly-shy EA. It was the moment she became something much more.

The QC Christmas party, 6 December last year to be precise.

* * *

  
**Christmas Party**  
**Friday, 6 December 2013**

Oliver wasn’t drunk. Not yet, but give him an hour or two more and he probably would be though. The single malt whiskey was going down a treat although his body would certainly feel the effects of it tomorrow.

He had no sad excuse to be nursing the dregs of his fifth, no eighth? Drink. He didn’t have a girlfriend so his heart, while unattached, was not hardened, jaded or broken. He didn’t have any dearly departed pets to be wallowing in despair over.

He wasn’t suffering potential business ruin and he hadn’t, as far as he knew, done anything particular spectacular either tipped for the good or the bad. He had no baggage and he liked it that way.

His glassy blue eyes drunk in the surrounds of the private function room as the ritzy Starling Grand Hotel, the city’s most swankiest hotel. With its brushed gold accents and its echoing cream marble floors everything in it spoke to the height of opulence and wealth. It wasn’t anything new to the son of the City's elite, but for most employees it was a chance to don a suave outfit and live like kings and, ironically, queens. If only for the night.

His wandering eyes bounced across the faces of teams of people he didn’t know. The ones with level 30 and above offices sat huddled most seriously around a table, talking about stock prices and mergers that weren’t innuendo puns, Oliver surmised.

Nearby the foxes chortled away, the women who had scooted past the age of 40 but refused to admit it. They were mostly diploma holding women who had scorned traditional family lives to focus on climbing ladders. Some of them weren’t too shabby but, Oliver decoded, they were the type of women that would be just as likely to suck you off as they would be to bite your dick off depending on their mood. He hadn’t gone there, nor did he intend to tonight.

The IT crowd nursed spirits mixed with soda.  
The chorus girls of junior secretaries sipped brightly coloured cocktails.  
The mother hens of support staff guzzled down glasses of red wine.  
The accounting department sulked in shadows clasping imported beers.

And pockets of others floated between the group’s.  
They were good people, mostly, and fine people, likely.  
He wasn’t here to judge, no he sat at the maple bar to watch. Just watch.

Because watching was what Oliver liked to do.  
Well, among ... _other_ things.  
In fact, cards on the table, Oliver had a whole host of things he liked doing.  
Most of which, he knew, were not meant to be spoken of in polite company.

“Whiskey sour, straight, please,” an unmistakably feminine voice ordered just above him  
“A whiskey drinker,” he chuffed as he rattled the small remnants of ice in his own tumbler  
“Indeed Mr Queen.”

That she knew his name shouldn’t have surprised him, but it piqued his curiosity enough that he dragged his eyes upward. Clinched waist wrapped in red, probably one of his most favourite colours to wrap around the womanly form, tight breasts, rounded and housed in a bra that lifted but didn’t allude to breasts that weren’t actually there.

Slender arms, bare with faint wisps of blonde hair. Pouted lips, succulent red. Eyes, blue, almond shaped, staring directly at him with just one raised brow, silently challenging him.

It took a moment and he almost didn’t believe the message that his eyes were sending to his brain.  
“Miss Smoak?” he sputtered, finding no relief from his choked surprise in his near empty glass  
“Yes Mister Queen,” she spoke taking her drink from the bar

 _She_ was the timid little secretary he had recruited only two months prior from her quiet position down in the IT department? It had been almost a joke, a test of his mother's goodwill and his father's patience. The old biddies he had sitting outside his office previously were undoubtedly good at their job, but they mothered him and took everything far too seriously.

He had a mother and if he wanted serious he would have watched the nightly news. Oliver needed some light entertainment and after looking through those within the firm who had put requests in to be looked at for promotions or internal recruitment, Felicity Smoak, MIT graduate slumming it in the IT department had caught his eye.

She was wholly inexperienced in that sort of role and she had looked at him most quizzically when he had offered her the position. But, after tacking on the prospect of working on the development of new and next level technical advances, Felicity had accepted the deal on one very odd proviso... that she would not work late Tuesday nights. No discussion, no wiggle room.

Oliver had agreed, though to this day he never knew where she trotted off to every Tuesday night (book club he had once guessed); but honestly he’d never made it his business to ask seeing as he too had a long standing _off-the-books_ engagement on Tuesday nights.

But, here and now, the woman beside him did not resemble his charmingly sweet little EA, with her short (but not _that_ short) skirts, her frosted pink lips, demure ponytail and vividly painted nails.

No, they couldn’t be one in the same.  
Yes, Felicity the EA was cute and he had found himself admiring her a few times, particularly in that grey dress with the orange patches, but it was a passing recognition that she was easy on the eye and a sweet, charm of a girl to work with. He had found her pleasant and smart. Like a fruit salad, nice, sweet, probably good for you but not your first choice when selecting from the desert tray...if the desert tray was a synonym for sex.

The Felicity at the bar hugged in red was definitely not fruit salad. She was chocolate soufflé topped with liquor spiked cream and topped with shavings of the finest rich chocolate.

And Oliver was starving.

“You look nice,” he offered, finally smoothing out his gravelled voice  
“Thank you, as do you,” she replied politely, nodding her head to her words

“Would you care to join me at the bar?”  
Felicity looked at him with that raised brow. She looked different without her glasses, not better or worse, just different. He enjoyed _different_.  
“No.”  
Her rejection was offered with a kind smile and Oliver felt soothed by it.  
“Perhaps I’ll sit with you over there though,” she added as her head tipped towards a vacant and dimly lit booth set back from the dotted cliques.

Oliver stood up faster then he had expected to and his slight wobble broke a chuckle from her lips. A delightful bubble of joy he couldn’t recall if he’d seen before, but he assumed not or else he would have surely remembered it.

“You look different without your glasses, my apologies if my surprise offended you,” Oliver remarked as they slipped into opposite sides of the booth  
She drew a soft line down the silky crease of her neck and smiled, what Oliver assumed, was a politely gracious smile.  
“It did not,” she spoke, each word purposefully enunciated  
“Are you enjoying the party?”  
Felicity took a deliberately slow sip of her drink, letting it swirl around her mouth before she swallowed.  
“Quite, it gives me an opportunity to see people outside of their normal habitats of cubicles and water coolers.”

Her eyes stayed on him, _locked_ , and when Oliver settled on the word locked he absolutely meant it. The direct contact of those flourished blue eyes was almost too heavy. He instinctively shifted in his seat to ease some of the weight.

“Habitats? That makes it sound like you’re watching them,” he replied, the hypocrisy of his statement not lost on him  
“Some people are watchers,” she shrugged candidly and for a moment he seriously considered asking if she had a twin sister because this Felicity was characteristically different to the one who took his phone messages and typed letters.  
“Are you?” he found himself asking though he hadn’t intended to  
She smiled an answer he took as a wordless _depends_.  
“How are you...” Oliver halted the question unsure of a charming or polite way to ask how the hell she was the same Felicity who peeped a hello and made an exceptionally terrible cup of coffee.  
“If you were going to ask how I’m the same Felicity you see every weekday, I can assure you I am the same,” she answered his half-asked question  
“However, I take my job seriously,” she started, running a finger across the dewy rim of the tumbler, “not the position of course, I didn’t graduate MIT with two degrees to shuffle paper and organise your dry cleaning.”

All Oliver could do was smile and lightly chuckle at her candour.  
“Then why take the position?”  
“Because, Mister Queen,”  
_Shit that sounded delicious, why had he never noticed the soft ‘Qua’ sound she gave his last name?_  
“I realise the business world has certain pre-dispositions about it. I want my hands on what you can offer me.”  
She didn’t blink at the subtle undertone of innuendo in her words, but Oliver did and the mole below his lower lip twitched through a smile.  
“Which is?”  
“Technology Mister Queen, you head the applied sciences division of your parents’ company. The things that division can conjure up will be extraordinary and I would like a front seat to seeing it happen, in hopes that perhaps one day booking in your hair appointments with Gerard will see me through to actually being a part of their revolution.”

Oliver admired the way she spoke, it was direct but without any hint of arrogance or aggression, it was beyond refreshing in a world of kiss asses and back stabbers.

“You have a lot of faith in the applied sciences division,” Oliver remarked as he shifted once more in his seat, his thoughts tracking to the thin brown wallet slipped into his tailored suit pants.

Not because the wallet was anything special but because inside it sat the key card to his penthouse suite and it was _conjuring_ up ideas. Terrible ideas. Woefully improper ideas.

He could not sleep with his secretary? _Could he?_  
He waved the bartender over and was presented with a refreshed drink within the minute – he had offered the bartender a hefty tip if he kept the replenished drinks coming.

Oliver sucked down the rich whiskey and settled his mind back at the table.

“You have some exceptional people working for you Mister Queen,” she said in response to his earlier question, tucking a lose wave of hair behind her ear, the rest pulled back into a twist of blonde hair and pins.  
“Call me Oliver,” he remarked before sucking back another mouthful  
“I prefer not to,” she retorted, the soft smile leaking across her lips giving a small peace offering that her rejection of his offer was not meant to be rude

And Oliver didn’t take it as that at all.  
Felicity had lines, lines she clearly preferred not to cross.  
Lines like the key card burning a hole in his pocket.

“So, you see,” she spoke, picking up from her original point, “that is why you see quite a different Felicity at work Mister Queen, most women are required to mask themselves in the business world, I find the less offensive, quietly and diligent blonde with the demure ponytail and glasses is the one that works best.”

Oliver leaned in, his elbows burrowing into the varnished oak table.  
“And what mask is this one tonight?” he asked, his eyes lightly lidded and his lips parted  
“This is no mask, whoever you see tonight will be the same person you’ll see on Monday, but certain characteristics will be shown or _hidden_ ”

There was something utterly distracting about the way she said that word, _hidden_.  
“I’m sure you can relate,” she added with an arched brow as she licked remnants of her whiskey sour from her lips  
“Can I?”  
“That’s a rhetorical question I assume.”  
A soft laugh dripped from her lips and Oliver’s eyes darkened at it.  
“We all _hide_ something do we not?” she offered  
“Like?” the word slipped from his lips more like a breath, but she heard it all the same

“Like our wants, our needs, if these fall outside the norm.”  
Oliver felt his neck stiffen and he rolled it to one side to loosen it up.  
_Had she heard something? Seen something? Had he let something slip?_ Because she seemed to know something that very, _very_ , few people knew.

He could feel his chest tighten under the soft ivory Italian shirt but it relaxed when he realised she hadn’t tacked anything further onto that simple remark. No demands, no judgement, she had left it simply as a statement placed figuratively out in the open on the table in front of them.

It was probably the whiskey talking and maybe this moment was going to be the single most stupid decision he would make, but _honestly_ he really stopped giving a fuck the moment the idea first landed in his brain.

Oliver slid the leather wallet from his pocket, flipped it open and eased the key card from the slot it normally lived.

He tapped the plain white card embossed with the hotel’s logo on the edge of the table, _tap, tap, tap,_ before he lay it flat and slid it into the middle.

**~**

Felicity gazed down at it, the lights may have been dim where they were sitting but there was no mistaking what it was.

Honestly, she wasn’t exactly surprised by the gesture. She knew she should probably say no, but saying yes seemed a far more _favourable_ course of action.

She was breaking a whole host of rules, ones that could see her both fired and banned and she wanted neither.

She dropped a single finger onto the middle of the white card and smiled.  
_Rules were made to be broken._

**~**

“Shall we?” she asked as she used just a single finger to drag the key card across the table and dropped it into her black satin-lined clutch

Oliver stood, adjusted his tie and roved a careful eye around the room. No one was paying them any mind, which was exactly how he preferred it. He gestured her first both for chivalrous and lascivious reasons, the latter because honestly he just wanted to see the way she walked from the vantage point of two careful steps behind.

He thought about touching her, sliding a hand down to the small of her back, as they left the function room and rounded the corner towards the elevators at the corner of the lavish foyer, but when she stepped to the opposite side of the elevator door Oliver felt the distinct air of caution about showing such a display so he retreated his hand into his pocket for safe keeping.

They rode up to the penthouse in silence, standing at least a foot apart from each other. Oliver was familiar with discretion, he would soon realise that Felicity was also extremely versed in the same.

**~**

Felicity felt the distinctive swell of arousal between her legs as the elevator floated through the floors. She knew the risks she was placing on this moment, but the deep seated growl that started so low down her pelvis and fanned out across her whole body, was a voice she could no longer squash.

Oliver Queen, her boss, was a good looking man, polished, well-dressed, charming, fit and she had noticed the occasional bulge enough to make the educated guess that he was reasonably well hung too.

But, Oliver Queen the CEO wasn’t her type. He courted and flashed around girls that seemed like carbon copies of each other. He posed in front of commemorative plaques and he basked in the spotlight of the tabloid pages. She didn’t begrudge him any of that, it was his life to do with as he saw fit, but it wasn’t where she wanted to be. No, her _wants_ were a little bit _different_.

And so, she had passed off most idle thoughts about what his chest might look like once devoid of clothes, to harmless musings and slightly dirty dreams. Nothing more.

Until, Tuesday night about four weeks ago something changed.

Felicity was astute, paying close and inquisitive attention to small details. Small details like the mole on the right side of his face. She knew it the instant she saw it.

She had gasped as he walked into her room. It was Verdant’s policy for clients to switch up mates (as they called them) every few months and although you could opt out of it, Felicity never had.

 _“You're beautiful” he had said, stroking a finger across her nude lips_  
_They were, together with her eyes (though she wore tinted brown contacts) not covered by her black lace mask_  
_His voice was rasped, as though he deepened it to hide his natural voice. It was not unusual but given she knew the suave tone his voice usually took it seemed so different._

 _“Thank you” she breathed before she sucked in his finger and batted it around her warm mouth_  
_She pulled it free, his face mere inches from her with his mole like an identity beacon. That was how she knew that the man she was about to have sex with was her boss._

She could have ended it. Right there and then, that was after all either of their consenting rights.

But she didn’t.  
She didn’t end it the next Tuesday, or the following two afterwards.

Four nights. Ten times.  
She didn’t end it.

Her idle thoughts of him each Wednesday became harder to disguise and her arousal turned from a passing one to an all-encompassing carnal need. Because, it seemed, her boss wasn’t as _common_ as she had once thought him.

That’s why she was in this elevator with him now.

**~**

Oliver took the key card from Felicity’s fingers when they stopped outside the whitewashed door of the penthouse suite he called home and had done for nearly a year.

The door opened into the opulent entryway. The old French-romantic charm of the suite wasn’t exactly to his tastes, but it came with a stunning view of the harbour and boasted the amenities he needed and the privacy he craved.

“Can I kiss you?” he finally spoke, the only words that had been uttered since they left the function room what seemed like a lifetime ago  
He watched as her breasts floated up, pushing against the tight constraints of her dress before they dropped back down when she exhaled the breath.  
“In a moment,” she replied, her voice soft but not timid

**~**

Felicity placed her clutch on the antique-white sideboard and danced her fingers along the inside of it.

 _Rules were made to be broken, especially when breaking them could feel so good._  
“Which Felicity would you like?” she asked, pressing her chest to his as she leaned in close to his ear, her fingers still slipped inside her bag  
“Which one are you offering?” Oliver replied, ghosting the lips across the threads of her neck

Felicity stepped back and wet her lips with a press of her tongue.  
“Your EA, the demure, sweet one who will cum when you tell her to in soft, hot moans. The one who will lock eyes with you as you bury yourself inside her, she’ll enjoy every minute of it until you fill the condom and we fall apart breathless. Perhaps we’ll do it twice before I shower and leave in the morning. We won’t talk about it on Monday or any other day thereafter, it will just be a fond memory you can use in the future if you wish.”

Felicity watched him swallow back the frankness of her words.  
“And the other offering?” he asked

Felicity pulled the boned satin and lace mask out from her clutch and held it up by the ribbon that secured it to the back of her head.  
“Megan, the one that will fuck you.”

**~**

Oliver wasn’t sure when he lost the ability to speak or how long it was that he stayed with his jaw dropped and his eyes bouncing between Felicity’s face and the mask she held in her hands.

It was the same mask he had studied so deeply, wondering what woman lay beneath as they spent the last few Tuesday nights together, pushing boundaries and having each other in ways that may have made some people shy back from – or worse.

His mask was thicker and stopped further down than hers, skimming his jawline and drawing a crescent around his mouth, giving it the freedom to kiss, lick and explore.

 _Megan_  
The name had become a fantasy to him on the other six days of the week. She reacted to him in ways no other _mate_ had. She had been responsive to his every whim and he, in turn, had indulged hers.

“But your eyes, they’re a different colour,” he stammered  
“I wear contacts as Megan, I brought them with me if you would like me to put them in.”  
Oliver shook his head, he had always thought something _off_ about the darkness of her eyes, they had never seemed quite right on her and now he knew why.

“Why would you expose yourself to me?” he asked  
He watched her eyes drop just a fraction before she brought them back up.  
“I don’t know, but I have a proposition for you.”  
“I’m listening,” he rasped

**~**

Felicity had decided on the proposition for some time now. She had written and rewritten the rules until she was sure that they would work, now was the time to find out.

“If you wish to have sex with your secretary then we’ll do that, nothing changes and we keep each other’s secret. Change mates and carry on with life.”  
“And if I chose Megan?”  
Felicity blew out a soft exhale as she heard the notes of his rasped voice of Bruce the ridiculous name he had adopted within the walls of Verdant.

“During office hours you have a secretary and I have a boss. It’s imperative that we don’t mix the two, ever,” she instructed, shifting her weight subtly to dim the arousal she was feeling between her folds, “Tuesday nights belong to ourselves as we see fit, together or apart, nothing changes there. _But_ …”  
She paused, letting out a sensual sigh.  
“Friday night, should we both wish it, we will stay late at the office, I’ll ensure the cameras on our floor see nothing and we are free to engage in _anything_ we wish, no masks and providing consent is given, no further rules; and on Mondays we repeat the cycle.”

And that was it, her proposal, laid out in front of them.  
She chewed nervously on her bottom lip, much like she had the first day she stepped over the threshold of Verdant into a world that was both exciting and new, as she waited for Oliver’s answer.

**~**

Oliver was a businessman at heart and he knew he should weigh up the pros and cons, the gains and losses and work through some form of a risk management plan, because Felicity’s proposal was risky, but _fuck_ did it sound like the best damn risk he would ever take.

He plucked the mask from between her fingers and dropped it onto the side table beside her clutch.

 _Fuck_ risk management and pros and cons. He wasn’t turning this down.  
“I chose Megan, but I was hoping to call you Miss Smoak, if that pleases you?”

He watched a knowing smile bloom across her deep red lips before she nodded, just the once, to accept his request.

* * *

  
**February 2014**

And that was how it happened.

She had let him chose that night which role he wished to take as they both so fluidly found pleasure in wherever their whims took them, not constrained to any one label.

He had chosen to tie her to the bed and tease her naked flesh with the very tip of a feather until she twisted against her confines and begged him with wet lips and a strangled voice to sink himself into her, which he did, looking into her eyes, now content that he knew their real hue.

Every Friday night since had seen them engage in this game and tonight was no exception. They had developed a raft of different cues, words that to some meant something inconsequential to them meant something quite different.

Case in point  
_I need you to take a memo_  
Meant that she would strip down to whatever undergarments she had chosen that day and present herself to Oliver.

 _I have some documents for you to sign_  
Was Oliver’s cue to do much the same, although his choice of undergarments was, in his opinion, far less appealing than hers.

**~**

_“I would like you to tie my hands behind my back and do whatever you want to take me as close to orgasm as possible, without letting me find release.”_

Those had been his instructions to her and she would be lying if she didn’t find great pleasure in them. Oliver stood statuesquely taller than her and his body practically swamped her own when he, or she, desired him to be on top, so there was something especially arousing when such a man practically begged her to control him.

She pulled the tie tight around his hands until he nodded they were secure.

Kicking his executive desk chair away from them she turned him suddenly to face her and backed him closer to his desk. The smile he wore was vivid and full of anticipation but she knew it wouldn’t be long until it was twisted in desperation.

She threaded his belt loose and jerked his pants down enough for his hard cock to spring out from under them. The head glistened with his own arousal and Felicity drew a slow finger through it.

“You’ve been thinking about me Mister Queen?” she asked as she raked her nails over the veins of it  
“Yes Miss Smoak, frequently,” he spoke, his cock twitching under her attention  
“Do you want to cum Mister Queen?”  
He nodded sharply seconds before Felicity gripped his cock so hard for a second he thought she might break it.  
“How much?” she asked, pressing her stomach into his head as she pumped him tightly down to the base  
“A lot.”  
“How much?”  
She tightened her grip around his throbbing cock, her nails almost breaking the thin skin underneath as she pumped faster and he groaned loudly, the sound of it echoing off the panes of glass that surrounded them.  
“A LOT,” he growled, from deep in the pit of his stomach

Felicity dropped his dick and watched it bounced down and up again like a bobble head as Oliver gasped at the sudden relinquishment.

Fresh pre-cum coated his head and Felicity crouched down to gather it with the tip of her tongue. Her eyes watched him shudder through the sensation, his lips a twisted mass of mouthed curse words and heavy breaths.

She had come to learn that Oliver’s threshold for deprivation was much smaller than her own, but rather than being disappointed with that, she actually found an illicit amount of pleasure from it. Their Friday nights alone didn’t allow for him to be tested and trained as what he did when they left this office was none of her concern.

She flattened her tongue against his shaft savouring the salty taste that her hand had dragged there as her hand stroked the underside of his cock, holding it up against the pressure of her tongue.

She could hear his breathing speed up and she could see the muscles that ran along his pelvis constricting. Once her tongue reached the base and her fingers curled through the thatch of dark blonde hair she found there, she kissed a jagged path back up towards the tip.

Her eyes locked on his, heavy lidded but still focused on her. She gave him a wink before she wrapped her lips around her head and took his cock into her mouth, stroking it with her tongue.

Felicity smiled as best she could as she listened to the guttural growls that fell like bullets from his mouth. She took him deeper, until his head bounced against the back of her throat, her fingers pumping the extra inch to the base that she could never quite fit.

Her mouth stroked him and her tongue flailed over the tip as she moved her head back and forth along his mass. She could hear the sounds of his sweaty palms gripped against the lip of the glass table and the desperation from them spurred her faster, filling her mouth another half inch.

He groaned and floated her name from his lips, “Felicity,” he hummed  
She knew his fingers probably ached to comb through her hair and his balls probably clung onto their release by seconds when she pulled right back, dropping his cock from her mouth with a pop.

“You’re close Oliver,” she stated as she stood unbuttoning his shirt as she went  
He nodded as he tried to concentrate of stemming the growing orgasm.

Felicity reached the top button and kissed his neck gently.  
“Well done Mister Queen, you stilled yourself,” she whispered into his skin  
“You’re an excellent test Miss Smoak,” he hummed, his lids slowly pulling open to watch her more clearly  
She pushed the shirt from his shoulders and drew enchanting lines across his chest, after all this was also for her pleasure and Oliver wouldn’t deny her such a thing.

Knowing there might not be a moment for it later, Felicity opened the second drawer down and found a condom in the old rubber band box Oliver squirreled them away in.

Tearing it from the foil she capped the tip of his cock, pinched the nib and rolled the sheath down his shaft, playfully floating her fingers across his balls when she reached the end.

Stepping back she admired him with saucer eyes and a tipped up smile at the corner of her mouth before she walked over to collect his leather chair. Placing it in front of his knees she patted the seat, her breasts bouncing freely as she moved, the sight of which made Oliver grin widely.

“Do you like my breasts Mr Queen?”  
“Very much so,” he answered as he took a seat, his hands still behind his back  
“What else do you like?” Felicity continued as she stroked a finger over one of her budded nipples  
“Your pussy,” he smacked his lips together as he spoke  
“You have a dirty mouth,” she laughed as she cupped his chin and squeezed her thumb and forefinger into his cheeks  
“Wash it out then.”  
Felicity smiled as she unclipped her suspenders and shuffled the wisp-thin panties down her leg, kicking them under his desk.

She jumped up onto his desk, gasping as the cool glass met with her naked ass. Oliver jerked his head forward, swiping his tongue across the nipple she had been playing with moments before, unable to deny himself that little pleasure.

Felicity didn’t reprimand him, he hadn’t asked for _that_ Felicity tonight and she had not insisted on it, so he suckled it for a few moments longer before she pulled it from his mouth.

She put her legs up on the two chrome arm rests of his chair and scooted her body to the very edge of the desk.  
“Wash your mouth out Mister Queen,” she winked, her legs, her body, spread open to him.

**~**

Oliver drank in the sight of her, her knees bent either side of him and her legs spread wide. Her folds were a light blush and wet in anticipation of him. It was not the first time she had given him such a sight both with and without the mask, but Oliver never grew weary of it.

His wrists strained against the tie, but they were well and truly tied so he would be doing this without them. He scooted the chair in closer until his legs were beneath the desk and he could smell her delicious scent radiating from her.

His bristled jaw slid against her soft thighs and she sighed at the sensation of it. His lips met with her lower lips and he gently eased his tongue between them, licking through the veil of arousal. She tasted delicious and every chance to bury his tongue inside her, he would take.

Felicity leaned back on her elbows as her legs fell further apart, tiny mewls of encouragement dripped from her lips as she balanced on one elbow and combed her fingers through the shorts of his hair.

His tongue lapped between her folds, finding her clit without delay. It was already swollen as he rolled the tip of his tongue over it below snatching it between his teeth.

Felicity gaped at the onslaught, but relaxed as he changed to stroking the thick of his tongue over it. He nuzzled and nestled his head into the very top of her thighs, growling against her folds at the fact he couldn’t use his hands in the manner he normally would – tweaking her nipples and pulling her open.

“A hand,” he grunted against her dripping folds  
“Pardon Mister Queen?”  
Oliver popped up from between her legs, “I need my hands Miss Smoak, kindly untie them,” he gritted through a clenched jaw from a design of baited arousal  
“That’s changing the request,” she smiled, looking down at his head between her legs, the sight of it making her chuckle  
“Then I’m changing the request.”  
Felicity thought about it for a moment and then, to Oliver’s great pleasure, she nodded.

There was no strict rules for the times when they were together, as long as both consented they could switch and change and integrate as much as they wanted.

Felicity leaned over Oliver’s shoulder, her breasts skating against his face as she slipped her arms either side of his body and blindly, but precisely, undid the knot that held his wrists in place.

His movement was instantaneously as he pressed her back into the glass desk and let his hands devour her. Cupping her breasts his thumb stroked over her peddled nipples and she arched her back in enjoyment of it. Moments later one hand dropped between her legs and spread apart her folds.

Oliver’s tongue disappeared between them as his fingers drew circles and crosses over her clit making her writhe against the cool glass.

His lips feasted on her, sucking and kissing and pressing against every part of her sex, grunting with unrepentance as he went.

Mere moments passed and Felicity was dripping with arousal as Oliver plunged his tongue inside her. His fingers clinched her clit and tugged it, shooting a spike of pleasured-pain through Felicity’s body.

His tongue swarmed her walls, bouncing and twisting and thrusting inside her with unrelenting excitement. Oliver could feel his cock tightening and it rigidly jutted around in the contactless air.

Felicity’s release gushed from inside her as her walls tightened around his tongue and her body shuddered atop the glass. His lips were covered in her, and his tongue bathed in the sweetness of it as he continued to drill it in and out of her, taking every last bit she had.

His erection grew painful as he finished cleaning her up, licking and stroking her, before he pulled away and admired the way she rolled through her orgasm.

“Let me finish,” he pleaded, aware of his original request to be tested  
Felicity didn’t ask him to clarify as she pulled herself up from the desk and slipped onto the chair, her legs fitting snuggly alongside his.

She held his painfully hard cock at her entrance, rolling it over and around it before she sunk onto him.

Oliver felt it immediately, her walls, still in spasms with her own orgasm, were now spurring him closer to his own. Despite how many times he had filled her with his cock she always felt so tight around him and when she clenched through every thrust the feeling was mind blowing.

She rose off him and sunk down a few slow times before his hands anchored into her waist and he sped her up, finding a rhythm that would, minutes later, lead to him to spilling himself into the condom with a grunt as he sunk his teeth into her breast, just as the clock ticked over past midnight and their Friday night drew to a close.

12:03am.  
They pulled apart and Felicity excused herself with a soft smile.  
“Have a lovely weekend, Mister Queen,” she breathed as she strutted, bare chested and bare assed towards the office door  
“You too Miss Smoak,” Oliver replied as he licked his lips to enjoy what was left of her release

Felicity unlocked the door and walked out, closing it part way – leaving it just a crack open.  
_Tap, tap, tap-tap._

 


	2. The Origins of Ms Smoak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So... this one shot porn without a plot is now a multi chapter fic with just enough plot to make it interesting (hopefully)
> 
> There are people to blame for this, they know who they are....and I love them for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, I have gone back and edited the dates on the first chapter so we're now sitting around 2014 present day. I did this because unless I'm writing historical fics I keep their DoBs as they are in canon.
> 
> Secondly, this chapter is an origin chapter, specifically Felicity's story, where you will meet a very important person from her past.
> 
> I do feel the need to mention that if you know me at all you will know I don't tend to write cliche troupes so with that in mind, let me just say this... NOT A LOVE TRIANGLE.

 

_“I believe that the more you know about the past, the better you are prepared for the future”_  
  
Those words were spoken by Theodore Roosevelt and Felicity had always lived by them. From her humble beginnings in Vegas, to MIT, to Cooper, to graduation and everything in between that led to this moment.  
  
The moment where she was about to have sex with Oliver Queen, her boss, and he had absolutely no idea who she was.  
  
And that past included one very specific person... Alexander Wolfe. Mr Wolfe to many or simply Wolfe to a select few, including Felicity.  
  
It was 2010 when Felicity Smoak met Alexander Wolfe.

**[August 2010]**

  
Felicity mumbled curse words to herself as she fumbled under the CEO’s desk in a labyrinth of computer wires. Six months, _six months_ , she had been at Global Industries, two degrees and _this_ was what she was doing.  
  
_Still_ , she mused, _it could have been worse,_ she could have been serving cocktails to half cut men in the middle of the afternoon in Vegas, probably dressed in her graduation gown with tassels swinging from her boobs.  
  
“That sounds like quite a performance,” a velvety smooth voice startled Felicity.  
She jolted her head up slamming the crown of it directly into the underside of the desk.  
  
“Mother fuc...” Felicity groaned as she crawled out from under the desk holding the top of her head.  
  
Still on hands and knees Felicity emerged, now staring at polished brown leather shoes that looked like they might be worth at least four month's pay and tailored deep navy pants that skimmed just below the ankles.  
  
Perfectly ironed pleats walked up long, slender legs. Felicity reached the apex and tried not to notice the sizable outline that tented his slacks.

He offered a hand to her, uncalloused but not weak with the nails neatly trimmed short, and hesitantly she took it, knowing the alternative would probably see her awkwardly fumbling to her feet and making an even bigger fool of herself, _if that were even possible._

When her eyes finally finished hopscotching up the fine woollen double-breasted suit jacket they met the strong jaw of a man who, frankly, needed no introduction.

Alexander Wolfe.  
_Self-made billionaire._  
_Saviour to struggling corporations._  
_One of the world’s most eligible bachelors._  
_Time magazine’s most influential man._

The magazine headlines bounced like a ping pong ball being swatted around her head. Felicity knew exactly who Alexander Wolfe was, but she wasn’t expecting him to be quite so... _present_.  
  
“Ms Smoak,” the way he said her name rolled off his tongue like it was melting and Felicity caught herself wetting her lips in response.  
“Felicity,” she flubbed as she brushed her skewed ponytail back over her shoulder.  
“Do you mind if I continue to call you Ms Smoak?”  
His voice was like velvet rolling between her thighs and Felicity found herself sandwiching her hands under her armpits to stop them from getting too clammy.

“Wait, how did you know my name?” Felicity quizzed before she swallowed the verbal diarrhoea that usually followed.  
“I make it my business to know when a company like Global Tech is hiding a genius,” he replied with a smile that would have put Brad Pitt’s pearly whites to shame.  
“I’m not a genius,” Felicity quipped, a pink shade of embarrassment blushing across her cheeks.

He wasn’t blinking. Those fantastical blue eyes were staring at her like there was nothing else in the world worth looking at.  
“A modest genius even,” he charmed as he took a step towards the awestruck Felicity who was on the verge of gushing like a teenager, _which she was not anymore._

“Forgive me if this is forward,” he disclosed, oozing so much confidence it hung in the notes of his cologne, “but I would like to buy you dinner.”  
He took another step forward and suddenly he was closer than Felicity had let anyone stand in a long time, especially a veritable stranger. But there was no desire to step back, no alarm bells ringing in her head, in fact, quite the opposite, Felicity wanted him to stand a little closer.

“You don’t even know me,” she breathed, her words almost a whisper as her lack of confidence made her voice tremble.  
“Isn’t that why people go out?”  
His finger brushed her hand and when her eyes walked up his impressive frame she saw a mischievous glint in his eye.

 _Jesus Christ, what was happening here?_  
Felicity wasn’t that sheltered, she could see a man flirting with her even if that flirting seemed completely illogical and misplaced.

“You can say no Ms Smoak,” he offered with a smile that only raised one side of his perfectly soft lips.  
Well, she assumed they were soft. They certainly _looked_ soft.

She toyed with the word no, so much so that she almost said it. After all, men like Alexander Wolfe didn’t ask virtually-invisible-recently-graduated-IT-donkeys to dinner.

But, he had…and his reasons were a mystery Felicity wanted to solve.  
“What time did you have in mind Mr Wolfe?” she asked, feigning confidence that saw his smile grow wider and a delicious glint spark in his friendly, but tempestuous eyes.

“I’ll pick you up at seven.”  
She hadn’t said yes yet and undoubtedly his confidence on anyone else would have been hugely unappealing to Felicity, but there was something so unmistakably alluring about it that she couldn't explain, even with her very impressive vocabulary.  
“Seven,” she agreed.

That was a decision that years later Felicity would still say was one of her very best.

 

* * *

 

It was probably the most relaxed start to a first date Felicity had ever encountered. Not that she had encountered many, most of her previous first dates were at sports bars or awkward cafes, but lack of vast experience aside, the night was pleasantly charming.

Alexander was a perfect gentleman. He arrived faultlessly punctual, a trait Felicity admired. They were taken to a discrete table in a stunningly opulent restaurant Felicity had never imagined eating at and they were surrounded by an arc of empty tables to ensure privacy. Alexander had explained on the car ride over that he was discrete in his personal life and he hoped she would respect that.

Which she did. She absolutely did.

It was during the main course when Alexander placed his palms flat on the table and looked, mesmerized, across the table at Felicity.  
“You’re intoxicating,” he spoke without a hint of that being anything more than what he was thinking right at that moment.  
Felicity brushed back a loose tendril of blonde hair, snaking it behind her ear as she sucked in shallow breaths, she didn’t know what to counter that with.

“You don’t like taking compliments, do you?” he asked, hints of an English accent threading through his words in a way Felicity hadn’t noticed before.  
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate them,” she offered before dabbing the napkin to the corner of her vivid red lips, “I suppose I’m just not used to them.”  
“You don’t think you’re beautiful?”

Felicity swallowed the urge to choke, or worse still, babble. She didn’t consider herself unattractive. She had all the necessities to be entirely presentable. But she had never really considered herself beautiful, not in the sense that the striking man across the candle-lit table was using it.

That was not some self-depreciating feigned modesty either. It was just a simple fact.

“There are people who see only the outside, the layers we project to the world,” he continued, his eyes softening but barely blinking and never severing the contact with her completely.  
“And what do you see?” Felicity asked as she tried to keep her eyes honed on him, even though her nervous disposition wanted to blink away.  
“What lies beneath all of that,” he offered before a finger brushed across his lower lip, “the spark.”  
“You see a spark in me?”  
She took a sip of wine to steady her nerves, the man was magnetic.  
“No.”  
It had not been the response she had expected while her finger ran slowly around the rim of her glass.  
“Oh,” she spoke listlessly.

“Have you ever seen an electrical storm Felicity?”  
She shook her head softly.  
“It is unlike anything, such power hidden just beneath the surface of something so, beautiful,” his eyes lingered on hers, especially with the last word, before he settled back against the chair, “I don’t see a spark in you Felicity, I see the makings of a storm.”

* * *

  
There were a few more dates, each as easy as the one before. Despite the very clear sexual tension gnawing just under the surface, Alexander was nothing but a gentleman, opening car doors, walking her to her door and asking for nothing even when she offered a chaste kiss.

He stayed on with Global Industries, fixing the near fatal flaws in the Board's management of the firm to grapple the floundering company back to the pinnacle of what it was once, and could be again.

Felicity learned quickly that Alexander didn’t mix business with pleasure. When they passed in corridors he was nothing more than cordial – she had asked him once, around their third date and his answer had been as transparently honest as she had come to appreciate.

 _“I won’t pretend to understand the struggles that a woman faces in her career, but my mother had an IQ not far from your own, she was fluent in four different languages and was naturally gifted in whatever she turned her hand to,” he admitted, his normally bordering on stoic expression warming as he spoke fondly of his mother._  
_“Your mother sounds like quite the woman,” Felicity remarked as she brushed back the hair the mildly chilled air on the restaurant balcony toyed with._  
_“She was, but she was 16 when she had me, 17 when my father left her,” his cheeks hollowed as he sighed, “she cleaned hotels for a living because nobody would give her a chance. I’m not saying she is you, only that the rules seem different between you and I.”_

_It was a fact most men minced words with, but not him. Not Alexander Wolfe. Mincing words was not in his arsenal._

_“You should never be judged because of who you sleep with.”_

His words resonated with her and the admonition was one Felicity kept with her. It was sacred, the one rule not to be broken, Keep the lines separate.

* * *

  
**[September 2010]**

The first time they had sex, made love, slept together – whatever you wanted to call it – it was what anyone would consider _normal_. It was slow, gentle and passionate. He took his time, catered to her needs and in the morning she woke up beside him, fully satisfied.

She felt her limbs stretch absently stirring up the slight tenderness between her legs. Her lips felt raw from his attentive kisses but she would gladly suffer any discomfort to feel another this morning.

The sun was peeking through the blinds and even though she didn’t care to know the time, instinctively Felicity’s eyes walked towards the alarm clock beside the bed.

_It was a little after 9am._

“No regrets?” Felicity hummed as she stroked a hand down the man at least fifteen years her senior but with the body of a man that you might mistake as no more than four.  
“Of course not my beautiful electrical storm,” Alexander breathed as he held her naked body closer to his own while his fingers stroked lazy lines down her arm.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, brushing back her hair when she raised her head to look at him.  
It was an unusual question to Felicity; she certainly wouldn’t be here in his luxuriant hotel room if she didn’t trust him.  
“Yes,” she breathed, the word fanning across his chest as her chin sunk in there.  
“I would like you to accompany me tonight.”

There was something almost unsure in the way he spoke. She hadn’t known him long, but she had never heard even a slither of uncertainty in anything that had ever left his mouth. In business he was ruthless, he didn’t care to make friends if it stood in front of doing his job honestly; and in his personal life he was sincere and straight.

His words just now seemed, _different_ somehow, perhaps a little nervous.  
“To?”  
“It would be better for you to experience it with fresh eyes, but I will keep you perfectly safe I promise.”

She had felt this way once before – on the cusp of making a decision, of choosing a path – when he first asked her out to dinner. _She hadn’t come to regret that …_

* * *

  
**[That Night]**

Felicity slipped into the backseat of the diamond black Rolls Royce Ghost, her dress tumbling a curtain of emerald green satin across the charcoal leather seat, exposing her smooth leg up to the thigh.

“You look stunning,” Alexander whispered as his finger traced the edge of her dress’ slit.  
“I didn’t expect you to send me a rack of dresses after I left you this morning,” Felicity smiled as she played with a pin in her swept-up hair.  
“I’m sorry, was it too much?”  
“A little, I don’t need to be shown that you’re rich Alexander, I’ve read something other than the gossip pages of a magazine.”  
The smile that broke across his lips was enamouring and altogether charming.  
“I’ll remember that for the future.”

Felicity nodded with a playfully raised brow. She may have been young – and she would soon discover she was a little naïve about some areas of society – but Felicity never harboured the desire to become a kept woman. It was not in her nature.

_An electrical storm couldn’t be harnessed._

“Five dresses to choose from will suffice,” she jested as she watched his fingers skim underneath her dress and trace the inside of her thigh.  
She stopped his hand less than an inch before it reached her sex. Her eyes tracked from Alexander to the driver before floating down to his explorative hand trapped underneath hers.

He leaned over and placed a light kiss at the base of her neck, taking a deep inhale of the flowery notes in her perfume that lingered there.  
“My driver is quite discrete, if you decide another time,” he whispered with his lips almost touching her ear.

He retracted his hand from under her dress without another word and picked up the box that sat at his feet. He slipped the ivory box with the jet black ribbon onto her lap and tipped his eyes down towards it.

“Open it, please,” he asked as he folded his hands onto his lap.  
The corners of Felicity’s lips raised slightly as she pulled the bow, ever-so-slowly apart. She lingered a finger at the rim of the box, enjoying the way he watched her so avidly.

Finally, with a soft sigh blowing through her mouth, Felicity opened the box and stared down curiously at its contents.  
“What are these for?” she asked as her fingers stroked through the strands of the long dark wig before bouncing to the mask of black lace and satin.  
“Do you trust me?”  
“Yes.”  
_Not a moment’s hesitation._  
  
“They are to ensure your anonymity,” he spoke calmly, his voice soothing like warm honey on a strep throat.  
“Are we doing something illegal?”  
_The question had to be asked._  
“No,” he blew out a soft chuckle that instantly calmed Felicity’s pounding heart, “I will also be wearing a mask. For my discretion and yours I ask that you put them on.”  
He moved his hand from his lap and folded it around hers.  
“If you’re uncomfortable with this I can take you home,” he offered before leaning a little closer to say the rest, “at home I will put my mouth between your legs and take you to the same orgasm you had last night where your skin is dusted in a pink glow and your eyes haze to a pale blue.”

Felicity felt her chest tighten with, not so much his words, but _the way_ he was saying them.  
They were vivid, honest and carnal – and she believed them.

“And the alternative?” she asked as she wet her lower lip with just a peek of her tongue.  
“I will take you to a far greater, more intense orgasm,” her grip tightened around his hand as his eyes bore into her soul, “one that blushes your skin crimson and makes your fingers feel like they’re dripping from your body. Where every inch of you is satisfied and every need, want, desire, is met.”

She tipped her head forward and took his lips with her own for just a startled moment where it was the only thing she could think to do.

Then she took the long, dark wig that had set waves and felt like silk between her fingers and secured it to her head.  
“How does it look?” she asked, preening the soft locks with her slender fingers.  
“Stunning,” he answered as he tucked a few stray blonde hairs up inside.  
Next she handed Alexander the two satin tails of the mask as she held the lace against her face.  
“Will you tie it on for me?”

He tied it gently but tightly into a bow that secured it to her face. He leaned in and brushed hair away from her shoulder before he kissed a slow path along the bare part of it.  
“Good choice,” he whispered when the path met with her ear.

Felicity turned back in the seat as she craned her neck to catch even just a glimpse of herself in the rear view mirror. She saw familiar eyes, but everything else seemed so different.  
“You will need another name, what’s your middle name?” Alexander asked as he fossicked in the pocket of his fine Italian suit jacket.  
“Megan.”  
Her fingers continued to play idly with the ends of the hair that may have rivalled her own in softness scale.  
“Megan,” he repeated, as though committing it to memory, “it suits you.”  
His mask was plain black and looked like something Zorro would wear if it wasn’t for the rich gold thread that ran around the edges of it.

“Couldn’t my name be something more exotic like Talluah Belle?” Felicity laughed in an attempt to settle the butterflies that were toiling in her stomach.  
“Will you remember that name?”  
Felicity pursed her dusty rose lips as she considered his query.  
“Megan will be fine,” she concluded with an enchanting smile.

The car pulled into an alleyway and stopped alongside a clean but nondescript door.  
“We don’t have to do anything you’re uncomfortable with Felicity,” he assured, “but remember only I know who you are so you’re free to enjoy _anything_ you wish.”  
He slipped from the car and walked around to her door, opened it and offered his hand.

Felicity took a steading breath in through her nose and blew it slowly between circled lips.  
“I understand.”

* * *

  
The name was _Intoxicating_ and the atmosphere was nothing short of that. The walls were matt black with glossy white mouldings and trims. The ceiling was ornate in the corridor they first stepped and was lit only by dim wall lamps drenched in scooping chains of diamonds.

A man dressed all in black looked at them with trained, inexpressive eyes as Alexander held out a simple platinum card that had nothing more than the number 51 embossed in gold on it before he ran it under the scanner in the man’s hand.

The statuesque man looked across at Felicity who tightened her grip on Alexander’s forearm in response.  
“She’s with me,” Alexander spoke calmly and the whole exchange was concluded with a nod.

A door just in front of them opened from the inside and a second man, almost identical to the first held it back as they walked in, Felicity half a step behind Alexander.

Even though the corridor had been dimly lit, this room was even more so. The walls and carpet were still black, or at least Felicity assumed so, but the ceiling was higher and darker and the only real light in what looked like the 5000 sq. ft. room was a chandelier that hung from the very centre of it and cascaded with ornate teardrops on a scale that was nothing short of opulent.

Felicity’s eyes drunk in the room as Alexander walked her deeper into it. There were other lights, blended into the room, but the architecture of it became less and less important when Felicity’s eyes focused enough to finally see what else the room held – _people_.

They walked through a labyrinth of sights – a man grovelling at the feet of a dominatrix dressed typically in head to toe leather; and nearby a woman wearing nothing more than a white mask and a smile on her blood-red lips lay stretched out across a black velvet chaise while another woman with rich auburn hair massaged her breasts from behind and a man nestled his head between her thighs.

People starred and touched.  
Voices sighed and cooed.  
Most moved slow and considered but others were faster, more frantic with their attentions on one another.

They moved around the room as sultry music filtered down between the sounds of other people reaching heights of pleasure. There were stages towards one wall that sat empty even as crowds began to gather there.

They stopped at a bar and Felicity felt a sudden wave of guilt wash over her for watching people at their most intimate moments but her eyes couldn’t stay away for long, roaming once more around the room as Alexander ordered their drinks.

She didn’t notice him take a royal blue ribbon from a nearby rack until his thumb smoothed down the inside of her wrist and the satin fabric brushed against her skin.

“What’s that for?” she asked as she watched him tie it gently around her wrist, the blue standing out like a beacon against her pale complexion.  
“People can’t touch you without your consent,” Alexander replied before he turned her wrist over and kissed the top of her hand.  
“Ordinarily they can?”  
“It’s a voyeuristic club Megan,” hearing her fake name coming from his lips seemed strange, but a certain part of Felicity enjoyed the playfulness of this escapism, “so it’s a little outside the social norms. But this will stop any unwanted attention,” he concluded as he tapped the blue ribbon.  
“And will you wear one?”  
He pointed a finger to the matching blue pocket square in his jacket. She hadn’t even noticed it before now.  
“So no one can touch you without your consent?”  
He nodded with a smile and Felicity was pleased she could ask these questions of him so freely.

“What does red mean?” Felicity asked as her eyes was drawn to a willowy blonde draped in a dress that barely had enough fabric to cover her ample breasts, and what fabric there was, was almost completely see-through.  
Alexander straightened his tie as he looked towards where Felicity’s eyes had travelled.  
“She is someone’s pet.”  
“I assume the man who is holding the end of the leash on her wrist?”  
He blew out a breathy chuckle as he collected the drinks from the bar.  
“Yes, likely.”

Felicity took a gulp of the strong liquid, clenching her teeth as the velvety smooth liquid coated the back of her throat like warm embers.  
“Am I your property?” she asked with her eyes entrenched in his.  
It was a question where only one answer would work for her.

“No,” he replied almost immediately, “I don’t enjoy that particular dynamic myself.”  
She took another drink, _flames on embers._  
“And what dynamic do you enjoy?”  
Alexander took a drink, his eyes never staving off hers as they continued to watch her over the rim of the crystal lowball tumbler.  
“Would you like me to show?”  
Felicity skulled the rest of her drink and blew out a breath that she was certain could have been lit on fire with the punch that drink packed.  
“Yes.”

There was a curtain of black velvet that hung from ceiling to floor with another man dressed in black and offering silent nods and discrete eye contact to pass through before they walked another corridor, identical to the first and stopped outside a black door that blended into the walls, but for the number 5 on it.

Felicity wasn’t surprised to see the room, like every other, was painted black, but the lights were much brighter and the luxuriousness of the room was more apparent because of it. An impressively large bed with red and gold hued linen and tall redwood posts sat against the middle of the back wall as drapes of red chiffon hung from the ceiling above brushed across it.

There was a grey-tufted armless sofa a few paces away from the bed with an embedded mirror that ran half the distance of the wall behind it.

The other two walls were lined with more tools and toys, more than Felicity had ever seen in one place, including during that one trip to the adult store with her mother on her 21st birthday.

Some she recognised, others she hypothesised and still others she had no idea what one might do with them – but a part of her was curious to know.

“Who are those for?” Felicity asked as a single digit pointed to the chains hanging on a pulley from the ceiling above the bed.  
She didn’t wait for him to answer as she walked deeper into the room, her eyes dancing from one explicit thing to another before they settled on a whip with a dozen tendrils spilling out from the top.  
  
“And this,” she started, her teeth dragging across her bottom lip as she paused, “do you enjoy this dynamic?”  
He walked beside her and touched the tip of one of the soft leather straps on the flogger and breathed out his answer, “yes.”

Felicity wrapped her arms hesitantly around her waist as her eyes stared at the tiny twitch near the seam of his lips, matching his dimple dance.  
“I’m not sure I would like to be whipped,” she offered timidly, but honestly.  
“Actually, Megan,” he started, staying in character despite the room being empty of anyone but them, a lesson Felicity would take with her in life, “I prefer to be the one whipped.”

When the words came from his mouth, Felicity wasn’t surprised. Perhaps a little relieved, but not surprised.  
“Do you like that because it’s so different to your real life,” she started, touching a finger to his unshaven jaw, “you have so much power there, so much control,” she continued, feeling his body caving in towards her.  
“Does it give you pleasure to relinquish the power, to let someone you trust take the control?” she added as her fingers swept under his chin while his eyes lulled closed.

She watched as he swallowed, his Adam’s apple falling down his throat before it bobbed back up. She could hear his breath getting ragged and the sighs bleeding from between his closed lips.  
“You are very perceptive Megan,” he whispered, kissing her thumb as it brushed over his lips.  
“Perhaps we could work towards that then, Alex…” she stopped when she realised she wasn’t sure what to call him, his name had never been discussed.  
“Wolfe,” he breathed, sensing her dilemma, “call me Wolfe.”  
“Wolfe,” she repeated, her tone darkly sensual, “we could start with something a little…”  
She paused while her fingers danced across a treasure trove of floggers, whips and crops until they came to a crop with a small suede paddle.  
“Gentler,” she finished, plucking the crop from its stand.  
Wolfe’s eyes opened, flecks of them turning dark with lust.  
“I would like that very much,” he rasped, his voice like pleasure between her folds.

His promise in the car that night was kept and Felicity Smoak found a part of herself she hadn’t even know existed.

_**An awakening.** _

* * *

  
**[May 2013]**

Wolfe was hovering and Felicity was unsurprised. She beckoned him closer with one bubble covered hand as she sat up in the bathtub.  
“You know I will always love you,” she charmed as she painted his noise with vanilla scented bubbles.  
“And I you,” he replied softly as his thumb skimmed across her plump, nude lip.  
“As best we know how to love, given both of us deny the need for it,” Felicity added with a tipped smile.

She wasn’t broken, or jaded or hurt from _love_ – whatever that word meant.  
But it was the notion of it that Felicity felt was wholly inefficient. It was a word that dictated too much in this world. A declaration of love was something that people sought after and mourned the loss of yet it was nothing more than just a word.

 _No Felicity never saw the necessity for this word, this love._  
She was happy with the consensual freedom that _Fuck until you don’t want to anymore_ held _._

When she spoke of her love for Wolfe, and he reciprocated the same, it was not this ideological love that the masses assume, it was an affection, a bond and this was its natural conclusion.

“And this is what we both want,” she continued, the sound of water lapping up the sides of the porcelain tub making her words even more haunting in their softness.  
“It is.”  
A hand brushed across his brow as he teetered on the edge of the tub.  
“And yet you wear so much worry across your brow,” she commented, brushing away the drooping bubbles from his nose, “you will find another mate.”  
Felicity was sure of that, and her offer to help was still on the table.

“It isn’t that which I’m concerned about.”  
He stood and slid his navy pants down his leg while Felicity patted her lips together.  
“Then why the face?” she hummed watching as his shirt made a pile on top of his discarded pants.

When his briefs joined the pile Felicity edged down the tub, making room for him to slip in behind her.  
“I worry about you,” he cooed as he kissed a soft line across the back of her soapy, wet shoulder, “this move across country.”  
Felicity smiled as her hand sliced through the water to rest around his growing erection.  
“I’ve done it before, I’m a big girl,” she joked as she teased his head between her fingers.  
“I could have found you a better job.”  
He kissed the words into her neck as his hand snaked around to her breast, gently twisting her nipple between two fingers.  
Felicity sucked in a hiss as she leaned her shoulders back into his chest.

“I’ve never wanted that from you Wolfe,” she commented as the water lapped against them while his hand caressed her breast.  
“That’s why I love you.”  
“The best way we know how,” she smiled as her eyes closed.  
“And Queen Consolidated is where you want to work?”  
“They could be revolutionaries in computer sciences and development.”  
“I hope they deserve you,” his teeth dragged along the threads of her neck.  
They lay in the warm water, silently together for what felt like a lifetime, simply enjoying each other while the time allowed for it.

“I’ll sleep in another room tonight,” he sighed as the water grew tepid.  
“No, with me,” she assured.

* * *

  
The next morning Felicity awoke to the empty bed she had expected but an envelope she had not sitting beside the same mask he had given her in the back of that diamond black Rolls Royce all those years ago.

Felicity opened the envelope and inside it sat a lifetime membership to Verdant, a club she remembered him speaking very highly of, and a note:

 _Enjoy what Starling has to offer you my beautiful electric storm._  
_~ Wolfe_

 

__

 


	3. The Secrets of Mr Queen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow guys, honestly the response has me floored.
> 
> Thanks for embracing Wolfe. He is proof, I believe, how an original character can absolutely enhance a fic over forcefeeding a verse character...seriously no verse character could pull that character off ;)

****

**[August 2012]**

“How much?” Oliver asked as he picked up his friend’s call on the second ring.  
“I don’t even get a hello anymore?” Tommy replied indignantly.  
“Hello Tommy,” Oliver droned before his voice cracked and he let go of a laugh, “how much?”  
He listened to the huff and bravado of his friend’s playful offence for a few moments before Tommy finally admitted what they both already knew, “this isn’t a loan, it’s an investment.”

Oliver closed his eyes and shook his head with a smile threaded across his lips.  
_It always was._

“Of course,” Oliver replied smoothly, “just like your bail was an investment last year?”  
He listened as Tommy cleared his throat, his best friend was born with a gift of the gab and Oliver knew he was about to put it to good use.

“To be fair,” Tommy started, mischief weaved through his tone, “it was an investment to bail me out last year because I ended up being your wing man with that hot Russian that night.”  
“She went home with you,” Oliver reminded.  
“Yes, yes,” Tommy argued, “but she was bat shit crazy and my ass cheek still has her teeth marks embedded in it, so _you’re welcome._ ”

Oliver blew out a laugh as he pushed back his leather chair and kicked his feet up on his desk. He was probably going to be here for a while.  
“So what’s the investment Tommy?”  
“A sex club.”  
Tommy must have heard Oliver’s tired groan down the phone because he was quick to annex, “but before you give me an answer, hear me out.”

Oliver scratched his temple before he ran the same finger across his weary brow and hummed for Tommy to continue.  
“I know what you’re thinking, Starling already has more strip clubs than it does Starbucks, and anything that offers a happy ending is seedy.”  
Oliver was nodding along – that was exactly what he was thinking.

“But this place isn’t like this, it’s a fetish club, members only and the members pull in salaries that even we would be happy with. This is for elite and _discrete_ patrons. Memberships start at fifty thousand a year and that’s for the basic package, the _average_ is a eighty thousand annually.”  
“And you sell sex?”  
“That’s the best part, it doesn’t. All it gives them is the ability to give themselves over to their consensual desires under the safety of anonymity and secrecy.”

“How come I’ve never heard of this place?”  
“Ahh,” Tommy was fossicking around for a way to sell the _but_ , “because it doesn’t _technically_ exist yet, this will be a brand new venture.”  
Oliver swallowed the desire to laugh.  
“And you expect people to share their inner most fantasies on a start up?”  
“It’s more of a franchisee,” Tommy corrected, “these sorts of clubs have been around for hundreds of years, _in fact_ , until it closed down about ten years ago, even Starling had one.”  
“What makes you think you can start this?”  
“This isn’t a whim Oliver, I have the backing of three successful clubs dotted around the country. I already have a ledger of names that want to become members and I almost have enough of the financial backing I need to break ground on this within the month.”  
“So why do you need me?” Oliver asked curiously.  
“You’re my best friend Oliver and you’ve had my back every time. This time it’ll pay off.”  
“Tommy…” Oliver sighed.  
“I mean it Oliver. I know I’ve made some pretty shitty investments, but this one…” he sighed, “just trust me and I need you on this.”

“It’ll have to be a silent investor,” Oliver started.  
He listened as Tommy accepted the first condition with an “Uh-huh.”  
“I need transparency with the books.”  
“Account yes,” Tommy hummed, “Membership no.”  
Oliver considered the counterproposal for a minute. He didn’t see any reason why he would need to see the membership ledger.  
“Accepted.”  
“So you’re in?”  
Oliver carded his thick fingers through his short hair.  
_What was money for if you didn’t spend it on your best friend’s crazy ideas?_  
“I’m in. How much?”  
Tommy cleared his throat, _another hard sell was coming._  
“One, two…,” he paused to consider it truthfully, “four million.”  
Oliver should have been surprised, but he honestly wasn’t.

He had enough sitting around in assets he could easily liquidate for half of that and the other half wouldn’t be that hard to come up with.  
“You’ll get a lifetime pass,” Tommy added with a Cheshire sounding-grin.  
“I don’t think that’s really my scene,” Oliver replied, holding back his tongue.  
“Oliver you don’t need to pretend with me,” Tommy replied frankly as Oliver sat back in his chair and planted his feet back firmly on the floor, “you’re not going to find a woman to cater to you through classified ads.”  
Oliver’s back stiffened, Tommy was right, _of course Tommy was right,_ his best friend knew almost all of his secrets.  
“Even so…” Oliver digressed.  
His secrets were safe.  
“Just maybe consider it.”

There was a timid knock on the door and Frances, Oliver’s current EA (at least he thought that was her name, she spoke like a mouse and anything she said was hard to hear, name included).

“This came for you,” she mumbled as she almost ran to his desk and placed a letter size black envelope on his desk before disappearing just as quick.

Oliver opened it with Tommy still on the line and out came a simple black leather mask and an ivory card with the embossed word _Verdant_ barely visibly on it.  
“How did you know I was going to say yes to your investment?” Oliver asked as he dropped the contents back into the envelope and slid it into his bottom drawer.  
“I didn’t,” Tommy admitted, “but I would have given you the pass anyway.”

* * *

  
**[Early October 2013]**

Oliver looked up from his desk just as his mother made her presence known at his door with a subtle ‘ _ahem_ ’.  
“Good morning mother,” Oliver flashed her a million dollar smile, despite knowing what was coming his way, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”  
  
“Where is Martha?” Moira asked, not seeing the need for a fanfare of pleasantries as she offered Oliver a returned smile.  
“Martha left.”  
Oliver returned to the paperwork he had in front of him, trying his hardest to not make it obvious he wasn’t entirely sure he knew what he was looking at.  
It was a budget – _of some sort._  
_At least he knew that much_.  
  
“Oliver,” she blew out his name just as she had when he was twelve and had been caught ditching school to take his father’s yacht for a jaunt, _among other occasions_ , “have you driven away another perfectly acceptable EA?” she smiled as she walked deeper into his room and folded her slender fingers over the back of one of his charcoal grey leather chairs.  
“Probably,” he looked up just enough to placate her with another smile which he knew worked when her smile grew in response, “she’s working for Grant in Communications now.”

Moira floated around the chair before she perched herself on it. Ever the debutant, she sat with her knees to one side, her legs crossed at the ankle and her hands placed neatly on her lap.  
“What was wrong with this one?” she asked astutely.  
Oliver turned the weighty gold pen in his hand – a graduation gift from his father – before he sat it down on top of the budget _of some sort._  
“She asked too many questions,” Oliver replied, fully aware that that sounded like the lamest excuse, despite it actually being true.  
“Like?”  
Moira Queen wasn’t accepting his lame excuse any time soon – _she never really did._  
  
“She wanted to talk about the weather and I have an app for that.”  
He picked up his phone and pointed to the weather app to prove his, still lame, point.  
“Honestly Oliver,” a chuckle blew over her burgundy lips, “you need an EA.”  
“I can ignore my own emails and eventually I’ll figure out how to clear my voicemail,” Oliver protested, looking down at the little flashing light on his phone that had haunted him for three days now.  
  
“Perhaps you ought to choose your own,” Moira remarked as she stood up, _discussion ended._  
“Brilliant pick two and I’ll eenie meanie minee it.”  
He almost laughed at his own joke until he saw Moira’s lips tense her once kind smile fade away. It was ‘ _down to business_ ’ time.

“Oliver I’m serious.”  
Her raised eyebrow cemented that fact.  
“So am I.”  
He matched her brow for brow.  
“There is a list of people looking for internal promotions, peruse it and then choose someone.”  
He caught his desire to whine about the fact he didn’t need an EA a little longer but ‘petulant child’ wasn’t really a good look on him.  
“Will do,” he answered simply.

* * *

  
It was a few hours later when Oliver found himself in yet another _business_ meeting with his best friend Tommy Merlyn regarding _Verdant._ The fledgling underground club now boasted a growing populous thanks to whatever connections Tommy had made with other likeminded clubs and Oliver’s wallet behind them.

It opened only ten months ago, after taking 6 months to completely refurbish the old premises into what it was today – a voyeuristic indulgence club bathed in black suede and green lighting.

“Are you coming back tonight?” Tommy asked, a certain level of suspicion in his voice.  
Oliver realised his absence of late hadn’t gone unnoticed.  
“I don’t think so,” Oliver offered simply, he didn’t have the heart to tell his friend any more than that.

He knew Tommy always meant well. That the girls Tommy had set him up with had been carefully selected from those that were in this for their own satisfaction and even a few that were in it for _other_ reasons (be that in the hopes of snaring a sugar daddy, debutants hoping to scare daddy into upping their allowance, or simply because they were paid to).

Oliver liked the last reason the least, and while it virtually went unsaid and the club didn’t pay them as such there were some girls who were offered free membership in exchange for having them ‘on the books’. What or who they did was entirely up to them and Oliver asked very few questions about the arrangements Tommy made, but it was just a fact that the growing membership of men needed to be balanced out with women.

While Oliver enjoyed the atmosphere and he was happy to be the bank behind Tommy, no amount of ‘matching’ Tommy did had every stuck for more than a few times, at best.

The women were always stunning, he would never doubt his friend’s ability to find an attractive woman, but they all missed something… _a spark_ … he sighed at the nuance of the word, he couldn’t even explain what he meant by that to himself, let alone anyone else.

Oliver Queen had his secrets, his sins and his vices but they all orbited around one thing – she had to intrigue him, match him wit for wit, he wanted neither a pet nor a mistress solely, he didn’t want something given freely nor did he want something so forcefully withheld – at least not as a constant.

 _A spark_ – it was almost too easy to say for how difficult it was proving to be to find.

“What was wrong with the last one?” Tommy pestered.  
Oliver shrugged his shoulders, despite knowing it was an action Tommy couldn’t see.  
“Nothing I can put my finger on,” Oliver replied half-heartedly before he noticed a young man with a nervous disposition holding a tablet and shaking outside his door.

“Just a minute Tommy,” Oliver spoke down the phone as he scoured the touchscreen display for the mute setting which _should_ have been easily spotted, _only he couldn’t see it._  
He gave up the search and just pressed the receiver to his chest as he beckoned the young man in with an exaggerated wave.

“This is the list Mrs Queen asked me to give to you,” he spoke with a tremble in his voice like he was scared Oliver might fire him on the spot.

Oliver blinked at him twice when a shaking hand held out the device. He wasn’t device adverse, not at all, but he also had no intention of looking through that list, whoever he picked would probably leave after a month anyway, _so what did it matter?_

“Pick one,” Oliver said calmly, trying to put on a decisive smile so the guy could stop looking like he was on the verge of wetting his pants or crying, or _both_.  
“I’m sorry?”  
Oliver tapped the side of the device and smiled again, like you would to a baby you wanted to be sure didn’t start wailing the instant they ended up in your arms, “look through the list and pick an EA for me will you, please.”

The _please_ may have come off a little condescending through his forced smile, even though Oliver didn’t intend it to, but the long-limbed junior didn’t seem bothered by that.  
“I don’t really think I should.”  
Now he resembled a goat lowered into a lion’s cage. If Oliver carried on with this request he was going to have an intern spread out unconscious on his floor and that was _never_ a good thing.

He plucked the tablet from the intern’s hand and placed in on his desk in front of him and began staring at a list of names that meant nothing to him if he was being honest, “is this the list?”  
“Yes sir.”  
Oliver pulled the phone from his chest and put it to his ear, “hold on Tommy, I need to pick a new secretary, assistant, person,” Oliver explained.  
“What happened to Martha?”  
He could hear the laugh in Tommy’s tone but this ribbing would have to wait.  
“I’ll call you back.”

He hung up the phone and rolled his finger down the screen, scrolling through a list of names before blindly tapping one.  
“There, this person,” he announced before he’d even taken a moment to look at the name.  
The intern looked down and pinched his brows together, folded his lips, opened them, closed them all while he decided whether or not to call Oliver out on his method of promoting someone.

He finally took a moment to look down at his screen to see what the intern was having such a hard time about, “Felicity Smoak it is.”  
_That didn’t sound all that bad._

“She’s in the same department as me, IT, I don’t think…”  
“You know her?” Oliver paused only long enough to get the intern to nod his head in response, “good, send her up.”  
“Uh.”  
Oliver offered him an ‘ _our business is concluded here_ ’ smile and a quipped, “thank you,” before the intern practically scampered from his office.

* * *

  
It was ten minutes and two work emails sent later before Oliver was on the phone with Tommy again.

“I got a great girl for you,” Tommy insisted, this time there was background noise to intrude on their conversation.  
“Last time you said that you set me up with some waif of a thing that wanted to be Anastasia to my Carter Grey,” Oliver groaned, that really should have been a membership question – _do you like those books?_ If they answered yes, their membership was denied.

He’d broach the topic of a membership exam with Tommy one day, when maybe they could afford to be a little pickier with their clientele.  
“Christian,” Tommy corrected.  
“Whatever.”  
“I thought you might like that,” there was a slight puff in Tommy’s voice – he was walking somewhere.  
“I prefer someone who can play many roles, either side,” Oliver replied somewhat vaguely, “a woman who enjoys a variety, she knows what she wants and exactly how to get it.” a spark.  
“Most of those types of women are much,” Tommy paused to catch his breath, “how do I say this? Older. I have a mate in her forties who…”  
“Tommy, I appreciate it, but no,” Oliver interjected.  
He would settle for uncomplicated one night stands where, if the lady was feeling a little frisky, he might get a blow job and she might rake her nails down his back.

That brought him enough pleasure to fill a condom and see her on her merry way quite content.

“I give you special treatment hand picking these women for you,” Tommy sighed, almost listless, “you know other men just appreciate whatever is handed them.”  
“I’m sure,” Oliver’s response was noncommittal, _Oliver Queen’s finest mode_ , “where are you anyway, you sound like you’re at a stadium.”  
“Near enough, the airport,” Tommy replied, letting the other talk slide for now.  
“Business or pleasure?”  
“Can’t it be both?”  
The both laughed, knowing full well that much of their younger years were spent trying to convince their parents that was possible.  
“I’m flying to New York to meet with some other investors.”  
“Ahh,” Oliver breathed, “the secret ‘word of mouth’ backers.”

He heard Tommy chuckle, it was no secret that Oliver wanted to know who else had pinned money and their good name onto this project, but Tommy kept that surprisingly confidential.  
“I meeting with one who is by far the wealthiest man I’ve ever met. Honestly Oliver if you combined your family fortune with mine,” Tommy paused to cough, “I mean, you know if my father hadn’t cut me off years ago,” a slightly pained laughed, “he would still be at least three times richer than us.”  
“And why his interest in Starling?”  
“Well,” Tommy lowered his voice, “apparently his ex is a member and she vouched for it.”  
“She must be quite remarkable, an ex whose opinion you still value is rare,” Oliver remarked, knowing full well he’d never accomplished such a thing.  
“I’m sure she is, I have no idea who though,” Tommy sounded almost disappointed.

“Friday,” he suddenly perked up.  
“What?” Oliver chuckled rocking back in his chair as he turned it to look out across the city scape.  
“Come this Friday.”  
“Why?”  
“Different days, different woman, I think I have the perfect match”  
Oliver sighed, and Tommy could tell he was on the verge of declining, “you won’t know unless you try.”  
“Fine,” Oliver lamented, if nothing else it was consensual sex with a woman who was usually very willing to mark his body with her nails.  
“Just promise me you’ll try to have fun.”  
Oliver let go of a laugh as his eyes stayed glued to the window, “we have a very strange friendship.”  
“Promise me.”  
“I’m sure the sex will be fantastic, I’ll let you know how many times I shoot a load,” Oliver laughed.

Then his laughed was returned with a slightly gasped chuckle emanating from the same room, and not from Tommy.

Oliver swung around in his chair and was met with an attractive smile across pinked lips near azure eyes and all part of a pleasant face which was attached to figure with an almost perfect ratio of curves, wrapped in a navy dress with a high neckline and a hemline that sat at the exactly centre of her knees.  
“Shit, I have to go,” Oliver cursed in a hushed voice down the phone.  
“Friday, eight pm, don’t be late.”  
“Got it,” he croaked.  
“I mean it.”  
Oliver hung up as he watched the woman try to rein in the smile that was starting to redden her cheeks.

“Uh, that was…” Oliver started.  
“Nothing I’m sure,” she finished, retracting the smile and composing her face quite flawlessly.

“Can I help you?” he asked the obvious question as he shifted in his seat and collected his gold pen from his table top in some instinctive act to look busy.  
“You asked to see me,” Felicity replied, watching as Oliver shifted the pen from one hand to the other, wincing as he moved his shoulder in a way that must have been uncomfortable for him.  
He tapped his pen against his desk pad, hoping it wasn’t too obvious he had no idea who she was or why she was here “uh.”  
… _not that he minded, she seemed cute in that sweet, demure kind of way._

“Felicity Smoak, Mister Queen,” she offered when it was more than vividly apparent he didn’t have the faintest idea who she was.  
His confusion was written as clear as marker on his face.

“That’s you?” he tried coughed, trying not to sound quite so surprised when he repeated it, “that’s you.”  
Felicity shifted from one foot to the other, her hands clasped in front of her, eyes forward, not staring but vastly different to the popping eyes of the intern that had stood in a similar position as her earlier.  
“Last time I checked,” she smiled.  
“You’re young?”  
It was a statement more than a question, but the inflection at the end pulled up his tone like he was utterly surprised – which he was, because she really didn’t look that much older than Thea, his little sister.

“Twenty-four.”  
She answered him concisely and without the smile leaving her expression.  
“I’m sorry, I just thought you would be older,” Oliver flustered for a minute, though he really should have left it well alone, “because your name sounds kind of old fashioned.”  
Her smile wavered just momentarily, one corner rising up into the slightest of smirks and Oliver was secretly pleased he’d managed to make her near perfect façade crack, even if only for a second.  
“I’ll pass that onto my mother next time we speak,” she replied, her blue eyes dancing with a sparkle like they were laughing.  
_Could eyes laugh?_  
“I’m sorry,” Oliver apologised, he’d now also offended this poor woman’s mother and her choice of names.  
It was actually quite a pretty name, but Oliver stopped himself from saying that, recognising it would only add to the awkward.  
“No need.”  
She caught her smile and paired it back as silence settled between them.

“Did you call me up to discuss my name, or?” she asked softly, Oliver wouldn’t describe it as timid and she certainly wasn’t nervous, but it was relaxed, inoffensive … _reserved_?  
He wasn’t sure what the right word was, but this wasn’t his usual interaction with woman in the 20 to 25 age bracket that was for sure.  
  
“No, actually, please have a seat,” he gestured towards the chair opposite his desk and with only a brief nod Felicity sat down, surprisingly similar to the way his mother had, knees tipped and ankles crossed, the only difference was how she held her hands, her arms were further up her lap and laid across it with her hands dropping at the wrist either side of her legs.

He shook it off, he had no idea why he found that so interesting.  
He tapped painfully slowly for Felicity’s liking on his keyboard and stared and his monitor for an extended period of time, undoubtedly looking up her credentials.

Oliver read a couple of lines twice and then a third time.  
She was smart, _incredibly_ so.  
“Wow, what on earth are you still doing down in IT?” he remarked, catching the small smile she offered in reply when he looked away from the screen.

“I would like to offer you a job.”  
He leaned forward in his chair, his hands pressed together on his desk, fingers instinctively pointing at her.  
“What job?” she queried, just a slight momentary brow arch.  
“My Assistant.”

Felicity almost laughed, out loud, literally, and that was not how she generally conducted herself within the hours of 9 to 5, but the way he had said it so seriously made her crack and she was fighting back the laugh with every breath she took.  
Until she realised that he wasn’t kidding – which made her almost choke on that stilled laugh.  
  
“I’m sorry, I think you have me mixed up with someone else, I have no experience in that field,” she offered, a little more flustered by his offer than she would ordinarily be.  
He wasn’t flirting with her, he wasn’t trying to get into her pants from what she could tell, he was actually _genuinely asking._  
  
“You don’t really need any,” Oliver chuckled, _at least she could probably find the mute button on his phone and that was better than he’d managed to do this morning._  
“And I don’t make coffee,” she added, although she wasn’t really sure why she needed to clarify that, she loved coffee and she often made coffee for her colleagues downstairs, but she’d said it now and that was that.

“All I ask is that you occasionally pick up my order from the café downstairs,” he spoke with a smile that plucked at the dimple on the side of his face.  
Oliver Queen wasn’t her type, but she could see the attraction.

“What’s the catch?”  
Her eyes instinctively narrowed at him. She was twenty four, but far more versed in the world than people gave her credit for.  
“No catch.”  
He raised his palms in a mirrored gesture.  
“There is always a catch.”

Oliver sat back in his chair, letting it bounce him twice before he let out a gentle exhale.  
“Where do you want to be Felicity?”  
It was one of those questions he’d learned in college, _the loaded question._  
She didn’t flinch where most would but rather she simply sat a little straighter in her chair and answered him.  
“I took a job with Queen Consolidated because you have the movement to be revolutionary in the research and development of technology, I intend to work my way there.”  
Oliver nodded, he might have been bested by a _mute_ button but he could read her well enough with the help of her credentials to know Felicity was eager to be more than an IT manager.

“And do you know what department I head up?” he asked with a half loaded grin  
“Are you asking me to prove a point, or because you don’t know?”  
She laughed, softly, a break in her otherwise poised demeanour.

Oliver laughed, much more loudly than he had anticipated, “see, you’re already way funnier than Martha.”  
“Who is Martha?”  
“My last EA.”

“Mister Queen…” she started.  
“Oliver,” he interjected.  
“Mister Queen,” she reiterated, _lines_ , “thank you for your strange but kind offer, unfortunately I don’t think this is really the path that I’m heading down.”

“You put in a few months with me, a year tops and that will look remarkably better on your CV don’t you think?” he countered, wanting her even more now that she had turned the job down, people didn’t often turn him down and it fascinated him if he were being honest, “not to mention seeing as I am the head of the Applied Sciences division you get a front seat to the revolution.”  
His dimple danced out another smile.  
He was charming, she would give him that, it was no surprise he filled the gossip pages with a new model on his arm each week.  
  
“And what do you get Mister Queen?”  
“Someone who doesn’t ask me about my weekend or want to chat idly about the weather,” Oliver offered with a shrug, it was the honest truth.  
She was cute and he could readily admit she seemed to effuse a level of charm he found endearing, but she wasn’t his type and he got the distinct impression he wasn’t hers.

“I have an app for that,” she quipped.  
Oliver laughed, his blue eyes shooting sparks like fireworks.  
_She got it._  
“Exactly,” he nodded.

Felicity’s lips folded over his proposal. He made a few good points, this job – despite the straight deviation – would bring her closer than hopscotching through the technical divisions. Having a big name behind you on a CV was impressive, even more so when that name was also the one affixed to the side of the building.

 _Maybe_ …  
“I prefer not to work weekends without a few days’ notice,” she countered, there was no sense in not expressly saying it.  
“Agreed,” Oliver answered with hesitation, he felt the same way, “business trips alright?”  
“Acceptable,” she hummed kindly.  
“Pay increase?” Oliver asked, the use of full sentences now seemed unnecessary.

“At least fifty percent to start with.”  
He nodded, it sounded fair. Honestly, he would have gone as high at 70%.  
“Late nights?”  
“If we have a deadline, yes,” Felicity answered, “if possible I need to keep Tuesday nights clear, I have a pre-standing appointment.”  
“That won’t be a problem, may I ask why?”

Oliver watched as her pink lips rose up into a smile.  
“I thought you didn’t like questions.”  
“That’s the right answer,” Oliver chuckled.  
_This could work just fine._

“So what do you say?”  
Felicity blew out a soft sigh. Life was about choices, so far she had always been happy with the ones her gut had chosen for her and this one wasn’t going to be the exception.  
“When would you like me to start?”  
She extended her hand across the table and Oliver took it, briefly shaking it. But not before noting how small it felt in his.  
“Actually now is good.”

* * *

  
**[Tuesday, 5 November 2013]**

Oliver wasn’t taking his call and each time Tommy’s name flashed over his cell phone display, he cringed progressively deeper each subsequent ring until it finally sent Tommy to voicemail.

He really shouldn’t ghost his friend, but Oliver didn’t have the heart to tell him that his last set up, _Crystal_ a week ago was hands down the _worst_ experience he had ever had. His shoulder hurt just thinking about it and the way she had bit into his flesh like he was some sort of delicious pound cake was the type of thing nightmares were made of.

The moment he had entered her room he should have turn around and left again. The hat she wore was grey and white and while it looked a little like a kitten to him she had categorically stated that it was in fact a hound and he should accept that she was a little feral and was living as a dog now.

He really should have left.  
_Thank you, but no thank you._  
But she had a nice smile and honestly who was he to judge?  
So he walked a little deeper into the room, asking her the normal questions;  
_Her name,_ Crystal or Ishmaelder if he preferred – _Crystal would be fine._  
_Her wants,_ to sniff him – that wasn’t all that uncommon, scent is one of life’s most untapped aphrodisiacs – the attraction to the smell of a person, natural (pheromones) or synthesised (the smell of vanilla candles burning could almost make Oliver come in his pants) was intense, carnal and if you happened to give yourself over to it, insanely erotic.

 _So Crystal could smell him if she wanted._  
He offered her a smile and a “please do,” and then she got on her hands and knees and walked a full circle around him until, on the second pass, she put her face between his legs and took in a loud, long and deep inhale – of his ass.

He decided in that moment that this was Tommy’s idea of a joke because this was so far left of his idea of a fun Friday night that there was no logical way Tommy would have thought Oliver would enjoy this.

Then, with a strength he wasn’t expecting, she leapt onto his back, whispered something about smelling like a fresh daisy and then bit him, _hard_ , on his shoulder, while she growled.

There might have been some licking involved and he was almost certain she began to hump his leg before he thanked her and left.

He hadn’t been back to _Verdant_ since.

He shook the memory from his mind with a grimace and a shudder and returned to the task at hand, namely preparations for a business meeting tomorrow, as the clock nearby ticked closer to 5pm; 4:48 to be exact.

Felicity knocked lightly on Oliver’s door and he welcomed her in with a smile. The last month had been effortlessly pleasant. Felicity, despite her lack of training in the secretarial arts, had proven herself to be one of the best EA’s Oliver had worked with (which had been a fair few).

She was attentive, diligent, quietly commanding and even his mother – after her initial closed-door meeting with him which consisted of _what were you thinking_? said about three different ways – had come to admit that with Felicity at the helm, _shit got done._

She never wanted to talk about the weather.  
She also never asked him about his weekend except on Friday nights, she wished him a pleasant one, and on Monday mornings she simply said that she had hoped he had enjoyed it.  
_She was perfect_.

He’d grown accustomed to the sound of her heels clipping across the marbled floor each morning and the pleasant but strictly office-kosher way she said goodnight every evening.

He knew very little about her but he did know she liked to buy fresh flowers every Monday, however the arrangements and the flowers always changed so he couldn’t be sure if she had a favourite.

He also knew she was Jewish.

And the last thing wasn’t so much something that he knew but rather something that he perceived – Felicity was far more confident than she let on.

Robert Queen had mentioned one evening after she had left for her Tuesday “long standing appointment” that she seemed timid but Oliver didn’t see that at all. She walked with her shoulders back and with clear, strong steps – she wasn’t assertive or timid.

He couldn’t get a read on where exactly she stood on that scale and there was something absolutely intriguing about that fact. However, Oliver never let himself dwell on it for much more than a few passing minutes.

Any more than that and he might find himself looking deeper than her charming smile and her pleasantly feminine wardrobe; and he had no business going there.

He had no mind to corrupt Felicity Smoak.

“Mister Merlyn is on the phone for you Mister Queen, he says it’s urgent,” Felicity spoke as she walked inside Oliver’s office.  
Oliver squinted at the top of his desk and sighed.  
_He couldn’t avoid Tommy forever._

“Put him through,” Oliver grimaced before he sucked in a breath of air and rolled his neck slowly, “I won’t need anything further from you tonight, so feel free to knock off a few minutes early,” he finished with a smile that she returned in kind.  
“Thank you Mister Queen,”  
He really wished she’d call him Oliver, Mr Queen was his father, but Felicity insisted on it, quite astutely he noted because of the gossip that had already begun to circulate through the office.

Honestly, Oliver wasn’t surprised. He’d plucked her from the fifth floor IT department despite having a raft of aptly qualified secretarial staff. She was much younger than most of the other EAs that worked with the heads of departments and, objectively, much better looking – again, Oliver merely noted it, he wasn’t intending on ever acting on it or letting the acknowledgement of it grow into anything beyond that.

Of course people were going to gossip.  
His own mother asked if he was sleeping with her – with a sigh and an expression that said something like ‘ _please God don’t be_ ’.  
Oliver was used to being the centre of office gossip, but Felicity wasn’t and her strict adherence to calling him Mr Queen was in an effort to not appear too friendly with him.

Oliver also wasn’t of any mind to fight her on it.

“Have a nice evening Felicity,” he countered as she walked from his room, tap, tap tap-tap.  
She turned in the doorway and gave him a smile that appeared almost a little devious.  
“I will,” she stated simply.

He would be lying if he said wasn’t curios about her Tuesday nights, but she never offered anything about it on Wednesday mornings and Oliver certainly couldn’t ask.

Tonight he didn’t let himself dwell on it either.

His desk phone sparked to life once Felicity put the call through and on her way past, with her handbag slung over her shoulder, she waved goodbye and closed his door.

“Tommy,” Oliver grumbled down the phone as he watched Felicity walk the length of the internal window wall, offering her another small wave which she acknowledged with a smile and a nod.  
“Your EA, she called me Mister Merlyn again didn’t she?” Tommy chortled down the phone.  
“She did,” Oliver sighed, rubbing his forefinger across his wrinkled brow.  
“It’s like she knows what that does to me,” he hummed, a sound Oliver didn’t need to hear right now.  
“I’m sure she doesn’t Tommy, she’s just keeping it professional.”  
It had been the same response Oliver had offered every other time Tommy had brought it up.

“What does she look like, is she cute?”  
Oliver felt aggrieved at the question and quickly found his mouth almost snarling at Tommy for asking it – _Felicity wasn’t going to be corrupted by Tommy Merlyn either._  
“Not your type,” Oliver grunted like a caveman before he cleared his throat, “and you wouldn’t be hers.”  
“What is her type? I’m great at role…”  
Oliver shut Tommy down with a loud and exaggerated cough, but the question stuck with him. Honestly, Oliver didn’t know the type of man that would be Felicity’s type, but he was damn certain it wasn’t either him or his eternally horny best friend with a penchant for getting his ass caned, _literally_.

“You didn’t call me to talk about my EA Tommy, what do you want?” Oliver segued seamlessly.  
“First of all, I’m sorry about the last one,” Tommy quipped, and Oliver could tell he was trying to stifle a laugh, “I got the wrong day, that wasn’t intentional, I swear.”  
“Verdant is only open three days of the week, how did you get it wrong?” Oliver huffed, he wasn’t entirely sure he believed his best friend but he had no grounds not to either – except maybe the bite on his shoulder that was _still_ there.

“Well when I told you Friday, I meant Tuesday,” Tommy pipped.  
“I see,” Oliver droned but he wasn’t buying it.  
“Go Tuesday.”  
“Today is Tuesday.”  
“Oh right,” Tommy breathed, and Oliver could almost hear the cogs of his brain ticking over, “I’ve been travelling so much I really don’t know what day it is anymore.”  
Oliver nodded with a hum of acceptance.  
“So, tonight, go tonight. I promise, I have the perfect mate. She’s picky, just like you.”  
“That usually doesn’t bode well…” Oliver sighed as he put his palm to his temple, he could only imagine what Tommy had in store for him tonight if he went.  
“Trust me, she is perfect.”  
“You said that the last time,” Oliver reminded.  
“This time I mean it, her name is Megan and she’s perfect.”

 _Famous last words_ was all Oliver could think about, but for reasons he couldn’t even extrapolate, he agreed.

Tonight he would meet Megan.

* * *

  
**[10:00pm That Night]**

John Diggle was a large man. Oliver wasn’t exactly small, but John could undoubtedly throw him over his shoulder and spin him like a child if he felt so inclined to – of that Oliver was quite certain.

He never used his full name within the club walls and any patrons simply referred to him as Digg. He never wore a mask, which Oliver found intriguing, but – he rightly assumed – the colossus of a man held far more secrets that any that could be spilt on him, so there was very little chance anyone would ever hold him to account for his work at Verdant.

His stride was long and each step he took was defined and purposeful. He didn’t speak much but when he did he carried a deep baritone voice that immediately commandeered attention.

“So Rake isn’t pissing with me this time is he?” Oliver asked as he walked half a step behind the mocha giant.  
‘Rake’ was Tommy’s club name, chosen both because of his somewhat wiry physique and because of the once commonplace use of the word in British slang to mean a prodigal man known for his immoral conduct, especially womanising. It was a pseudo that suited Tommy exceptionally well, even the disinherited part, and Oliver was very careful about using it within the club’s walls.

“I must admit, I was surprised about Crystal,” Digg remarked with a half tipped smile.  
Oliver’s eyes widened, he wasn’t even expecting John to answer let alone answer quite animatedly.  
“And Megan?”  
Digg offered no words in response but his smile stayed threaded to his rounded lips and Oliver wasn’t sure whether he should be excited or deeply, _deeply_ afraid.

They stopped outside a door and Digg jangled the master keys in his hand for a moment before he found the right one.  
“Should we knock?” Oliver asked abruptly, strangely nervous, although he couldn’t place why – he was hardly new to this.  
“Miss Megan has asked that you watch first.”  
Oliver’s brow pinched under his mask, _she knew he was coming._

“She’s expecting me?” his voice cracked a little in the surprise.  
It wasn’t uncommon but often most arrangements, meetings, were more of a blind date situation, only with a higher likelihood of sex and no subpar restaurant meals.

“Miss Megan is particular,” Digg said simply, his words might have been considered ominous if it wasn’t for the smirk pulling up one edge of his lips.  
“Which means?” Oliver was asking more questions than he was probably entitled to but he really didn’t want to get bitten by a woman who was convinced she was a dog, _again_.

“She has asked you watch her first, if you wish to meet her then the door between the rooms will be unlocked,” Digg unlocked the door and opened it into a dimly lit room, “I suggest you use your time in here wisely.”

Oliver plucked back his lips and his brow beneath his mask.  
In the years since Tommy, with Oliver's help, had opened Verdant and hired John, he hadn’t spoken this many words cumulatively.  
He decided to test his luck, “by?”  
“Watch her Bruce, learn what she likes, what she doesn’t.”  
Digg swept his hand into the room and Oliver stepped in, still completely unaware what he would be presented with when he lifted the blind that covered the two way mirror.

One more question...  
“Why are you...”  
“Helping you?” Digg finished, “you don’t think Tommy came up with this match by himself did you.”  
Before Oliver could fish for more information the door closed and he was left alone in the Peek-a-Boo room.

It was sparsely furnished and, as the name suggested, it really only had one purpose. A large Chesterfield armchair upholstered in black velvet with seams etched in chrome domes sat in the centre of the room with a small table beside it. The green-tinted lights were dim, and all set against the far wall making Oliver’s eyes require a few moments to adjust.

A thick black roman blind made of draping velour covered a large two way mirror – which in essence was just a window that allowed the darker side to remain almost completely hidden and the lighter side to be clearly visible.

Oliver didn’t know what to expect on the other side of the blind. He was fairly certain he hadn’t insulted John or Tommy recently so the idea that this was some ruse to get him in the same room as someone even more left-field than the canine lady didn’t seem plausible.

He held his breath and raised the blind.

When he saw her he momentarily forgot how to let it go again, until the lack of oxygen made his eyes water and he gasped for air.

Beautiful was an understatement.  
A throw away word in this circumstance.

Megan was far more than beautiful and he’d decided that in seconds.

She was sat on the edge of a lounger that looked to be the same soft velvet as the chair he would soon sit in. Her dark hair, a rich chocolate colour, cascaded in soft waves past her shoulders which were bare except for the thin straps of her seamless bra that covered her creamy breasts in thin, black chiffon. She also wore a gown made of the same fabric that slipped down her shoulders.

She wore a mask, as expected, of black lace that sat in stark contrast against her porcelain tone, he couldn’t tell the colour of her eyes from this distance but for some reason, he expected them to be an oceanic blue, hedged with the faintest hint of green.

She had the most stunningly swan-like neck, bare from any accessories as it swept into a décolletage that Oliver could see himself kissing, languidly as her chest rose and fall with small, faint breaths.

Her stomach looked soft and supple and he imagined with a sigh just how smooth it might feel under his fingertips and just how it might contort under sensations of hot and cold. Her legs were crossed so he couldn’t be sure what she wore on the bottom, but he imagined it would be much like the top, see-through chiffon, ruffled in and ebony hue.

Her legs were muscular, but soft – a unique combination that was often hard to find but exactly how Oliver loved them. He almost cupped himself just thinking about how it might feel to press his shaft into the inside crook of her knee and let that soft skin surround him.

Oliver knew she couldn’t see him and yet as she looked out towards him, he honestly felt she was looking straight through him.

He tapped on the window pane twice to let her know he was there and her eyes followed the sound before her dusky-pink lips turned up into a smile.

He made his way to the chair and settled on the edge of it, his eyes affixed to Megan.

He watched as she took a black feather from the table beside her before she stood up and Oliver noted his correct hypothesis about her panties, even down to the soft frill at the legs.

She brushed the feather across her neck, tracing where Oliver would like to gently place his hand and tip her chin up to look at him if given the chance. When she reached the middle her path changed and the feather floated under her command down the centre of her body.

Oliver watched as her darkly rimmed eyes blinked heavier – she was enjoying the soft brush against her skin.

Megan preferred a sensual touch over a forceful one.  
_He was learning._

Once the feather had made invisible tracks all over her torso she dropped it and it floated to the ground, though her eyes never left off the mirror.

She slipped off the chiffon gown that had dropped to her elbows and left it in a puddle behind her suspendered black pantyhose and patent black stilettos before she unclipped her bra and walked it slowly down her arms.

Oliver literally gulped when that too fell to the floor and her breasts were on display for his eyes to devour. They were perfectly pert, her nipples a rose coloured hue and budded tightly – she was already aroused.

He didn’t know if she had been before or whether it was the idea of being watched by someone that had her milky complexion slightly flushed and her nipples tightly coiled.

She tweaked her own breast and those full, pillowed lips parted to let out a moan or just a silent sigh – Oliver wasn’t sure, all the rooms were soundproofed.

His pants tightened around his erection.  
He wanted to imagine her moaning.

He watched as she retrieved a riding crop from the nearby rack. He swallowed heavily, almost certain if it wasn’t attached he would have swallowed his own tongue as she dragged the crop up her leg then cracked it right on the outside of her thigh.

Her breasts bounced just enough for Oliver to notice and her head tipped back.  
“Fuck,” he groaned, touching a finger to the thick outline in his pants.  
_Megan also liked to play it a little rough._

She tweaked her nipple with her free hand, letting it explore her breast quite unrestrained, just as Oliver would like to given the chance. Her tongue rimmed her lips, slowly as first, but speeding up when the hand around the breast upped its pace.

“Fuck,” he simpered again, thankful that she couldn’t hear him falling apart at something that was so fluid, so simple.

She cracked the tip of the crop against her leg a second time, though Oliver decided it wasn’t pain she was after, but instead she relished something else.  
_Did she know what it was doing to him?_  
_Did she know that each time that crop slapped her skin he wanted it to be coming down on him instead?_

And then the hand on her breast dropped and Oliver almost protested on its behalf, until he saw her black painted nails dip under the waistband of her panties.

He watched her eyes hood over as she walked closer to the mirror. Oliver’s breath stilled, a part of him afraid she was going to close the blind on her side, severing his time with her, but she didn’t.

She stood, almost at a perceived arm’s reach, touching herself slowly but building a rhythm.

Her mouth was open and Oliver would give anything to hear what noises might be bleeding from it, or how warm her breath might be.

He wanted to smell her.  
Bury his nose between her legs and just breathe her in deep.

Then she did something most extraordinary.

With her eyes wide, close enough now that he knew they were darker than he’d imagined, her lips parted and her hand still caressing her folds beneath a curtain of chiffon, she looked _directly_ at him.

Even though he logically knew she couldn’t see him, it felt like she absolutely could.

Oliver stood, his erection prominent and he didn’t try to hide it.  
_He needed to meet Megan._

* * *

  
Felicity took a sharp breath inwards when she heard the click of the door that separated the two rooms.

She let a smile cross over her lips as she waited somewhat impatiently to see Bruce, if Digg had been selling her a line about this mate she would give him a shitload of Blockbuster fines and send him so much fucking spam...

She harnessed her smile behind her lips as she turned slowly putting her back to the door. She would let some of her other senses revel in him first before allowing her eyes to judge.

The scent of sandalwood floated into the room as her eyes hung closed. The carpet hid his footsteps but a slight scuffing sound told her he had stopped not far into the room.

She heard him breathe, it was slow and considered and it made her imagine his voice carried a slight rasp.  
She wasn’t wrong.  
“Megan,” the gruff of his voice was soft, but the tone was deep.  
He was aroused.

She breathed it in, a hint of musk now filled the room. He likely wore a mist of sweat across his brow, under the heat of his mask.  
“May I come in?” he finished, his tone much lighter, though the rasp still clung to the edges of each word.  
It was _almost_ familiar.  
If it weren’t for the American accent, she might have considered it similar to Wolfe's – deep but soft.

“Yes,” she replied, her usual tone now replaced with a sultry one that almost hummed the end of each word.  
She listened to the door closing and she held her feet anchored, determined not to look. Eyes were only one of the tools of arousal and yet people often relied far too much on them.

He stepped closer, she only heard a single scuff so either he walked in almost complete silence, or his stride was long. Felicity believed it to be the latter.

He was close now, she could feel his presence near her naked back. His breath caught a few strands of hair there and they gently swayed against her skin in an erotic dance.

“I watched you,” he rasped with a breath of warm air fanning her skin.  
Felicity sighed, there was no need for pretence here, if it turned you on you could express it freely, and everything about what Bruce said in that moment turned her on.  
“Do you like to be watched?” he asked coyly, a hint of mischief in his voice she found quite intriguing.  
“You paid attention,” she answered with a smile he couldn’t yet see but he could hear.  
“Is that a yes?”  
His lips were close to the curve of her shoulder as she almost felt every syllable he spoke.  
“Yes,” she hummed, delirium dripping from the word.  
His voice had her.

There was only one other she needed before Felicity would give herself over to her eyes.  
“Will you look at me?” Oliver asked, his fingers lightly brushing down strands of hair like a soft autumn breeze.

His question sent a warm shiver down her spine. It was almost a request, but there was a neediness attached to it that made it sound much more carnal than the words would ordinarily allow for.

“Soon,” her breathy response made him sigh, he wouldn’t hold back his pleasure either and that drew back Felicity’s lips in a smile, “first, touch me.”

Oliver let the air escape his mouth as his eyes wandered the canvas of her back, unsure where his fingers ought go.

It was pale but warmed with a pink under glow that made her skin almost luminous even in the green hues the wall lights were bathing them in. Her shoulders were narrow but defined with long, sloping muscles that he imagined would constrict beautifully when she cracked a whip like he was certain she could.

Her spine sloped almost perfectly and her skin was free from any blemish. A light dusting of beige freckles at the wings of her shoulders caught his eyes and made him want to seal each one with a kiss.

Her arch was deep and with a dimple sat guard either side of it, it finally flourished out into a round backside that simultaneously made his mouth water and his lips dry.

There were so many places he wished to touch.  
“Where?” he managed to ask, his voice now thick with gravel as he held himself back.  
“Wherever you like.”

His mind flew ahead of him, thinking of her breasts and wanting to rub those tight nipples between his fingers before leaping to where her hand had delved as he wondered if her folds might still be warm and rich with her slick arousal.  
_Fuck, he wanted to touch every part._

But he remembered the feather, its light, airy touch had made her lips part and her body lightly tremble. He remembered...

His fingers lightly touched her spine, a brush just below the curtain of her hair. His fingers sparked to life like electricity as they grazed over the softest skin he had ever felt.

Felicity smiled.  
That was it.  
A touch.  
Amidst her storm he reached out only a few fingers and brushed them down the sweep of her back.

She sighed quite rousingly, his slightly calloused fingertips and the seductive way in which he used them had given her all she needed.

Her eyes could feast on him now.

Felicity turned slowly, the cuffs of his jacket came first, neatly tailored and sitting perfectly at his wrist, then arms that were firmly braced against the wool-blend jacket. Wide shoulders and a muscular frame undoubtedly hid a taut chest for her fingers to soon discover. He was tall, at least two feet above her. His broad but long neck was painted in a few days of neatly trimmed growth, she was certain he kept it like that as it wasn’t patchy or uneven.

Strongly defined jaw. Luscious lips framed with a soft dimple and a small mole.

Felicity blinked furiously before she took half a step back to drink every part of Bruce in together as a completed puzzle.

She blinked again.  
Her lips parted but she managed to still any sound.

_Bruce was Oliver Queen._


	4. The Rules You Don't Break

 

 _Bruce was Oliver Queen_  
_Oliver Queen was her boss._

Those two sentences were turning spiral in her head on an infinite loop that found Felicity unable to set her mind to anything else. Her first instincts were to hide her bare chest from him, to retreat into the shadows and ask him to leave, and she hated the very idea of that. Because that wasn’t her – _but it was the portrayal of Felicity Smoak the (for now) Executive Assistant to Oliver Queen._

She watched as his brow furrowed, he could sense her immediate change in demeanour and Felicity struggled to maintain her composure as she completed a complex math equation in her head to calm her thoughts.

Because if she broke character, _everything_ she had worked so hard to maintain would break too.

Alexander had said that a woman shouldn’t be judged on whom she chooses to sleep with, nor by the manner she chooses to do it. But, the cold hard reality was that she would be and not least of all by Oliver.

Perhaps not intentionally and she certainly didn’t believe he would use the information against her, but something would change. Something would have to change. You don’t meet your secretary in a sex club almost naked under the premise that you want to fuck her without something changing.

He would look at her different – either with excitement or disdain because there was no middle ground – and it wouldn’t matter if he was even more of a degenerate than her.  
The woman always came off worse.  
The scandal stuck longer.

Once she steadied her breathing and fell back into the character of Megan his quizzical look instantly softened.

 _Megan_ was confident, assured, sexual and able to read much more than the words people spoke. It wasn’t that _Felicity_ wasn’t all of those things also, because she was, neither ‘character’ was faked or pretend – it was simply that within these walls Megan was free to be expressed without judgment.

_Felicity was free to be that part of herself._

“You’re beautiful,” Oliver said with a smoky rasp as his finger stroked across her deep crimson lips.  
He watched with ravenous eyes as her bottom lip moved with his, pulling taut before slipping back.  
“Thank you,” she breathed, her slender fingers cupping his hand while she slipped his finger into the warm confines of her mouth and gently batted it around while her eyes buried into his soul.

She was looking for answers to questions she’d never considered asking.

His skin tasted salty against the flat of her tongue as it laved slowly up the underside. There was something so carnal about the taste of a man. Something that Felicity – _Megan_ – had learned was instinctively different to that of a woman. Neither was better or worse than the other – _just different._

Just as fluidly as she had fed it through her pouted lips, she slid Oliver’s finger from her mouth and slowly released his hand from hers.

He left it hovering there in mid-air for a few moments, fully entranced in her, while his eyes admitted to his unspoken desires.

She had never noticed his eyes before, the many shades of blue that they housed and the thick eyelashes that framed them.

But she needed to bury this, say her attraction to him had passed, in other words Felicity needed to lie.

Outside of these walls she may not have been attracted to Oliver Queen – or at least what she knew of him before tonight – but inside these walls she could not deny the aching bubbling in core and the arousal pooling in her panties.

And then he decided to speak, gravelly, rasped and so very different to his office hours voice and Felicity found herself almost dripping.

“What’s your kink Megan?”  
His fingers ghosted the curve of her shoulder, pricking her skin with desire.  
“I’m only allowed one?” she answered coyly as she gave herself over to the moment – _just for now_ she swore.  
“Dom or sub?” he asked, even though he knew those weren’t the only two choices but he had become altogether blinded by the assumption that they were.  
“Either _and_ both,” she whispered fluidly, letting the ‘ _and_ ’ fall like a promise from her wet lips.

His eyes sparked up, like tiny bolts of lightning behind a curtain of blue.  
“Does that bother you Bruce?”  
She could pretend for now, _she had to_ she insisted, _to keep her secret safe._  
“No,” he sighed as his cock stirred behind his pants, “it excites me.”  
It was almost a hiss how he spoke and in any other circumstance it would have been too much, but here, now, in a position where they made no secret of their desires, it was fitting and made Felicity want his mouth against her body in every way imaginable.  
  
“And you, what kinks do you have?” she asked, not challenging him as his eyes dropped to her breasts.  
She watched as he animatedly licked his lips while his eyes followed her breasts rise and fall with each breath she took.  
“Like you, I have many,” he hummed as he worked his gaze back up towards her face.

Oliver studied her features with a smile he didn’t try to hide. Her dark hair suited her pale complexion and even though he knew it was a wig, as they often were, he recognised how well it complimented her to the point that he would not be surprised if she had a similar hair colour when she walked the street, although, he imagined, honey blonde would also look invitingly warm against her tone.

Her eyes, that surprised him, the colour at least.  
They were stunningly almond-shaped and framed with thick lashes that if they contained false ones, they were expertly done. She had lined them with greys and blacks to create a look of smoke behind her eyes, but she had also tipped the wings with a bright pink. It was a pop of colour in an otherwise dark canvas and he found it insanely appealing.

But her lips,  
They were something else.  
He wanted to touch them, feel them contort and tighten, spring and mould around his fingers. His wanted to study them, watch the way she ate, drunk, kissed.

At the moment they wore a deep plum colour but he could imagine them being able to wear a dusky nude to a bubble gum pink and every shade in between.

“Why are you here?” she asked bluntly before her lips softly pressed together, waiting for an answer she wasn’t sure she could predict.  
“Why is anyone?”  
A chuckle, meant to disguise his hesitation, blew from his lips. There was something almost unsure about it.

“We all come for different reasons Bruce,” she instinctively touched a thumb to his bristled jaw and his eyes lulled closed, lapping the contact up, “What do you get out of this, the rush of anonymous sex?”  
Her thumb stroked up his cheek, feeling the warmth of it bleed into her skin as she coaxed his eyes open.  
“It’s not the anonymity that I am most attracted to,” he sighed, the line where her thumb had touched him now like a river of lava scorching his skin most beautifully, “what I want from you now would be the same as what I would want from you if I saw you across a bar or a boardroom table.”

Felicity sucked in a gasp at his last comment, her mind suddenly engulfed with the idea of it.  
“The anonymity merely gives me the freedom to ask it and you to refuse or grant it without society’s predications of guilt or remorse. Anonymity or not I would still want these things from you.”

“So if I asked you to remove your mask, you would?”  
Oliver considered the question silently, despite the fact his mind had already instantly answered it the moment it left her mouth.

He had bedded women without it and his wants had always been there.  
The mask never gave him those wants nor did removing it take them away.

“If who I was behind it didn’t colour your answer then yes, I would.”  
In fact Oliver hoped that one day he might find a mate that would take it off for him. Let him be _both_ Oliver and Bruce.

“And you?” he asked softly as his palm grazed the sloping curve of her waist and his thumb hooked her low waist garter.  
“The anonymity is very important to me,” Felicity answered truthfully.  
“Because outside these walls you are somebody?”  
She laughed slowly, her hips rolling against his warm palm, “No, I’m nobody.”  
“Then why does it matter?”

Felicity stepped closer, her lustful eyes now only seeing Bruce – the man whose touch made her shiver and whose voice made her carnal.  
She leaned down and plucked a kiss to a thread of his neck that constricted beneath her lips before she whispered, “because I like being a nobody.”

They stayed almost like statues for a few minutes, their warmth passing between each other in ebbs and flows reflexively with their breaths. Her skin felt like silk under his rough hands as urges pulsed between his legs.

Oliver had been attracted to women before, of course he had. Most nights he ventured out into the Starling nightlife and stumbled across a woman at a bar or closing in on him on a dancefloor, he had always been sexually attracted to them.

But this feeling right now, with his hand braced against her waist and his thumb feathering over the line of her ribbon and lace garter, it was like attraction on cocaine.

Megan felt like a drug coursing through his veins. He wanted to inhale her, inject her, taste her – he wanted her illicit and naked and he would do whatever she asked just to get it.

But he would have to be blind not to see the slight trepidation in her eyes. It had been there since she turned around to face him.  
“Would you like me to leave your room?” he asked softly, the frayed edges of his voice hoping for one answer but fearing another.

Felicity felt the warmness of his skin melt against her hand as she carded through the shorts of his hair.

“No.”  
For once she wasn’t absolutely confident in her decision, but she made it all the same.

“And what is it you want Bruce, a quick moment to have me. To take me hard and fast, no different to any other woman you’ve had before only tonight you don’t have to pretend you have any intention of calling me tomorrow,” she soothed, no sense of judgment in her voice while she touched a hand to her own chest, cupping her breast as she spoke and watched his pupils blow wide.

He shook his head, the idea of only having her tonight left him feeling pained and empty. One _bite_ of her would never be enough to stave off his hunger.

He stepped forward putting his hand atop hers, massaging them both into her pert breast while he kissed her neck.

She hummed softly before her hand slipped away leaving only his against her breast. He squeezed and rubbed the base of his palm to the underside while his fingers teased her nipple in slow circles.

“More,” he growled against her neck, his lust clearly caught in his tone, “I would want more from you and I will give more to you. To watch your fists tighten in the sheets as I cater to your every whim, I want to have you test me, push me, take me to my limits until I break underneath you.”

“You want a mate?” she asked, letting herself enjoy the way his lips ran down her neck.  
She had always preferred the intimacy of a mate, the desires she had needed to be catered to with trust above all else. The limits to which you take or give control depends on, or at least it should, the level of trust you have between two people.

“You don’t want love, but you want the stability of having someone there, knowing that their body is yours and yours is theirs,” she continued, mirroring her own thoughts.  
“Yes,” he hummed, his eyes hung closed and his breath came out uneven and stretched.  
“Would you like that?” she whispered, her lips never leaving off his skin, relishing the way her words made his temperature rise, “to have me, whenever you wished?”  
“Yes,” he repeated, his voice more ragged than before.

Felicity pulled back, severing the contact and eliciting a guttural groan from the deep recesses of Oliver’s chest.

“And do you find me attractive enough to want that?” she whispered, feathering a touch across his pouted lips as he appeared almost bemused by the question.  
His eyes wandered down to the erection straining against his pants, “is my attraction not obvious,” he effused, a slight break in his deep voice.

“That,” she walked her fingers up the length of his cock, feeling the hard corners of it as she imagined it filling her, imagined _Bruce_ filling her, “is all physical. Once it’s spent, it goes away. We both leave happy,” she smiled, her tongue peeking between her lips, “but there is nothing that brings us back again.”

Oliver’s eyes traced the path her tongue took briskly across her bottom lip, eager to trace it with his own.

“I need you to find me attractive here,” she combed her fingers across his hairline, floating over the strap that kept his mask in place, “BDSM is as much psychological as it is physiological, so the attraction must be both, or at least be able to grow to both.”

He understood, his head bobbing slowly in agreement. But he was certain of the fact his attraction went beyond just the physical in the way his brain could think of nothing else but her. A fog of desires and wants and the gleeful thought of asking for them.

“But one inevitably comes before the other,” he crooned, his voice a rich creamy sound that rolled off his tongue like the finest melted chocolate.  
Felicity smiled, his challenging eyes were playfully dark and enchantingly magnetic.

“Which is?” she asked, walking slowly around the room, her legs restless.  
“I could tell you,” he hummed as he followed her, watching the way her svelte arm dragged lazily across the side of a Chesterfield couch, identical in colour and style to the chair in the room where he had watched her.  
“Or?” she challenged, propping her body against it with her legs stretched out in front, her black stockings edged in lace daring him closer.

He stood between her legs, impressively larger than her but she didn’t flinch or blink away.

The tips of his fingers glided up the insides of her thighs.  
“I could show you.”  
His lips crushed against the crook of her neck, pressing wet and hungry kisses firm against her skin. Felicity lolled her head to the side, opening her neck up wide to his salacious appetite.

“Do you have any rules?” he asked, his words muffled against her flesh.  
“My lips,” Felicity groaned, feeling her body starting to flush with arousal, “they aren’t for yours.”  
Oliver agreed with a languid sigh before feeling the forbidden fruit of her lips with his finger. He understood her request and it was not an unusual one. For everything they might do, everything they might give themselves over to, kissing lip against lip was a level of intimacy that went beyond that.

His lips walked slowly down the ivory slopes of her shoulders, lowering himself to his knees and relishing the soft mewls that she gave to him so freely until his mouth reached her breast. He encased it greedily, pulling it almost entirely into his mouth. He caught her back across the shoulders as she arched it, letting him feel her breast tightening inside his mouth.

His tongue relentlessly teased her coiled nipple by tickling it with the tip before grazing the flat of it over the top. Felicity keened into him, her soft voice coaxing him to keep going, to push his carnality and her limits.

Her fingers splayed through the shorts of his hair at the back of his neck, twisting and tugging to mimic the way his tongue toyed with her breast.

His teeth nipped her and a breath of heated air sprung from between her swollen lips.  
“Harder,” she urged, giving herself over to the moment.  
The moment where she would fuck Bruce, knowing full well that Bruce was Oliver.  
Oliver her boss.

She felt a wicked smile grace her lips and she didn’t try to rein it in – perhaps it wasn’t such a hard decision to make after all.

He had said it himself, the anonymity wasn’t important to him, instead it was the freedom to ask, to give and to receive and as long as Felicity could give that to him, despite knowing who he was, then so be it.

Oliver listened to her request and his teeth clamped around her breast harder. He felt her writhe and he could tell her breathing was quickening. He held her tight against him, one hand now splayed across the small of her back as the other hand grazed of the thin fabric of her panties.

He could smell her arousal and the notes of it teased his senses as he rubbed two digits on the outside of the chiffon.

No sooner had he dropped her breast from his mouth did it clamp onto her mound. His unshaven jaw pricked at her thighs as his chin sliced between her folds.

“Tell me what you want,” she hummed as he sucked the very tip of her crease, making her skin flex around her clit quite exquisitely.  
“I want to fuck you,” he answered bluntly before his tongue slipped under the side of her panties, tasting her fresh arousal.

Felicity grabbed a fist full of his hair and pulled him up from the ground, harnessing the way his dark eyes showed he enjoyed it.

“And how do you want to fuck me?” she asked, her alter ego now completely engrossed in this game.  
“Would you like it hard?” he asked and she replied with an uneven smile and a slow nod.  
“Then hard,” he smirked as he stepped back and watched her shuffle the panties from her body, “but not fast,” he added as he swooped back towards her.

“Why not?” she asked coyly as her fingers worked down the buttons of his shirt.  
“I want to see myself going in and out of you,” he growled as she tore his shirt down his arm leaving nail tracks in her haste.  
“Do that again,” he begged, wanton need clearly etched in his tone.

Felicity snagged her smiled with her teeth as she did just as he asked, her nails scraping down the taut muscles of his arm. She watched his face cloud over with pleasure and his entire chest glisten with sweaty arousal. She clawed his chest next, making fiery red lines against his olive complexion.

He cupped her bare sex in the palm of his hand and pressed the heel of his hand against it before plunging a finger deep inside her. With adept fingers she pushed his pants and briefs down his legs, smiling when his cock sprung up from behind them.

Her hand coiled around his cock, pumping him sharply as she reached for a condom from the bowl nearby.

“You want to watch yourself having me?” she asked, her voice smoky and wickedly hot as she tore open the foil and continued rocking his cock in her grasp.

Oliver nodded eagerly while his fingers hooked into her cushiony walls.  
Her hands moved quickly to sheathe his throbbing cock while she walked him around to the front of the couch and once it was done, she pushed him down and he fell onto the velvet cushions without a fight.

“I know what you want,” she hummed, taking the finger of his that was coated her arousal and threading it through his lips.  
Oliver sucked her juices from his finger without hesitation, letting it bleed slowly into his tongue.  
“You do?” he asked, a smile twisting up both corners of his lips.  
“You want to watch my body stretch around you? Watch me take you in?” she licked her lips, “all of you. You want to see the way my body holds you, clenches around you and swallows you in. Isn’t that right?”

He moved forward, perching his body on the very edge of the couch before licking his tongue up the inside of her thigh where some of spent glistened.  
“Yes,” he growled, his voice sounding more rabid that he had ever heard it before.  
“Do you want to hear how tight it feels, how you’re making my body work for it, how deep I can feel you?” she asked as she bent down to kiss his chest softly where her nails grappled against only moments before.

His eyes darkened until they were almost completely black before he answered with a heady “yes, fuck, yes.”

Felicity smiled as his hands anchored around her waist.  
“Then I’ll let you know,” she said flippantly with a smirk before she turned in his hands and settled onto his lap.

Her back folded into the curve of his chest as she nestled her ass against his stomach. Tipping her pelvis she slowly ran his length between her folds, teasing her body with the sensation of riding his shaft. She could hear his groans of enjoyment and she could feel his hot breath misting down her spine. His hand gripped her waist, not moving her but moving _with_ her.

His head grazed over her clit as she bucked into it, pressing it deeper and taking everything she needed from it before she angled her chest towards his knees and eased the tip of his cock into her entrance.

The pull was almost immediate, her body stretching to accommodate his width. He kissed her back and stroked fingers through her hair as he savoured the way her walls tightly encased him. Her hands shadowed his, pressing his grip tighter into her waist and Oliver understood without instruction that she needed him to hold her steady.

When his cock was snuggly inside her, buried to the hilt, Felicity walked her body down Oliver’s spread legs, bent at the knee and with his feet firmly planted on the floor. His cock tipped inside her, now pushed up tight against her back wall as her feet raised towards the ceiling.

Her elbows dug into the carpet as she dropped her head forward, adjusting the angle of her hips only a fraction until she could feel Oliver’s cock brushing against her g spot.

His eyes walked over the hills of her ass cheeks and down the deep valley her back made before she twisted her neck to catch his eyes.  
“Are you ready?” she whispered as she tested the pivot of her knees by rocking back against him.  
He hummed decadently as he locked his eyes onto the place where their bodies met. Slowly he worked her body up his shaft, watching with wide eyes as his cock slid out from inside her. Her sex was pink and fleshy at the folds and glistened with her slick heat, but where his body stretched her it was thin and almost translucent.

Halfway up his rod he pulled her back down, relishing the gasp that came unabashed from her mouth. She had been right with her descriptors, watching himself sink into her again and again was like watching her body swallow him. He could feel her gripping his ridges and her walls folding in around him.

“Can you see it?” she breathed, a heavy pant in her voice when he thrust himself deeper.  
“Yes,” he replied, hauntingly dark and excited.  
“My whole body can feel you,” she groaned as her forehead dropped to the floor.  
He slowly drew his cock out before slamming it deep inside her again, “feel me what?” he asked salaciously.  
She lifted her head and he could see the mischievous smile she wore.  
“Feel you fucking me,” she answered as her dark hair spilled onto the ground and over his feet.  
“What do you want?” he asked as he built up the rhythm.  
She bucked back into him, twice as fast as the pace he had started, “I want it,” she spoke in broken sentences, “harder.”

Her entire body shook with each thrust he made while she continued to coax him on, _deeper, harder, faster._

Her body felt so tight around him and he could feel his head pressing hard into the walls of her back passage. He had never fucked like this. Never been given the clear and perfect view of his cock sliding in and out, pummelling her sex like a jackhammer all while she goaded him on, her small frame taking everything, _everything_ , he gave her with pleasure.

His thumb rolled over the mound of her ass, travelling the canal before lightly dipping into her puckered hole.  
She hummed wantonly at the intrusion before Oliver dipped it in a little deeper, burying his thumb to the first knuckle.

Her body was so tight and engaging, moving with him and riding up him that the room soon filled with cries of pleasure as they both neared the edge.

He fucked her hard and deep, letting her noises be his guide until his entire body was drenched in sweat and he watched as droplets of her own sweat formed on her back and slide down the curve of it.

Felicity reached an arm up between her legs, feeling for her clit and stimulating it with frictionless strokes and pinching, willing herself closer to her own orgasm as Oliver bared down on his.

His balls tightened, hugged in the soft black velvet as a tingling sensation prickled up the back of his legs. The threads of his thighs constricted and Oliver came in a freeing but breathy chorus of her name.

With a strength he didn’t realise he possessed Oliver withdrew from her immediately and pulled her hips up into the air, flipped her and braced her legs over his shoulders before his mouth surrounded her thrumming sex.

He was going to make sure she had an orgasm just as powerful as his own. His tongue bathed her clit as his fingers curved and twisted inside her, feeling much more expressively the way her walls clenched and released.

Her hand cupped her breast, tightly fisting it until she too felt the fire from her core spill out between her legs, where Oliver caught it all and feasted.

With their bodies still reeling from their climaxes and doused in the dewiness of the same, Oliver lowered her onto his lap and her torso snapped up to meet him face to face.

“Does that cover the attraction?” he asked impishly as his fingers slalomed down her back.  
“I think that above covers it,” she replied, her voice thin and roguish.  
“Next week,” he feathered a finger through her hair, “you can tell me what you want.”  
She smiled languid and catlike.

“First the rules you don’t break,” she offered as her body slowly rode out the last few waves of her orgasm.  
“I’m listening,”  
“Outside of these walls you and I are free to do whatever and whomever we wish but,” she purred as she felt his cock starting to grow underneath her, despite his filled condom still drooping off it, “inside these walls we are for each other only. Any deviation on that is to be agreed.”

Oliver nodded without reservation.  
“We take turns with each other’s fantasies and building the trust between. We wear masks but everything else is open. Every other fantasy, desire or craving can be discussed. I trust you with mine and you trust me with yours.”  
“I agree,” he answered, letting his hands gently touch her body just to feel the heat radiating from her.

She stood off the couch slowly and Oliver followed suit before he worked the condom from his shaft, knotted it and threw it away.

“One last thing,” she started as she collected the chiffon robe she had been wearing earlier and wrapped it around her body.  
“What’s that?” he asked while he collected his discarded clothes and began to dress.  
“I don’t love you and you don’t love me,” she spoke clearly, not a single word laced with any emotive tone. It was as stoic as it was purposefully blunt.

“Lines become blurred in the heat of the moment,” she continued, tie the robe around her waist, “but I assure you regardless of what your cock tells you moments before you climax, you don’t love me and I do not love you.”

Her eyes stayed affixed to his, making sure there wasn’t a moment where doubt flickered across them.

But there wasn’t.  
Not even a little bit.  
He understood just as categorically clear as she had said the words.

“I assure you Megan, I’m likely just as incapable of love as you are.”  
She thanked him with a smile before she sauntered up to him and brushed her lips against his ear, “and don’t worry, all your secrets are safe with me.”

Oliver didn’t realise just how true those words would become.

She slipped a card from off the red oak table near the door as Oliver finished buttoning his shirt. She folded the same into his hand and closed his fingers around it.

“Text only,” she issued the concise instructions as Oliver realised she’d given him a telephone number, “it will never be answered if you ring and there is no voicemail.”  
That suited him just fine.

 

* * *

 

**[Next Day]**

  
Felicity watched over the screen of her computer as Oliver walked around the corner from the corridor and into her alcove with a particularly apparently pep in his step.

“Good morning Felicity,” he smiled as he placed a takeout cup on her glass desk and tapped his finger cheerfully on the lip of the desk to the beat of a song that was playing in his head.  
“Good morning Mister Queen,” she replied, looking with slightly narrowed eyes at the unexplained cup.

It wasn’t that Oliver never offered to buy her coffee, if he ever went out to get it he almost always asked if she wanted one. But it was 9am and he’d never just _shown up_ with one.  
“Caramel macchiato,” he offered as an explanation and a slight tip of his head that resembled a puppy looking for praise.  
“Thank you,” she took the cup and let the aroma of it dance under her nose, “but I’m not sure why you’re…”  
“You’re a great EA Felicity, best I’ve had.”  
She nodded thankfully, trying to reel in the smile that was threatening to pass over her lips, there was something scandalously exciting about the way he purred the last three words, _best I’ve had_.

“Do you buy these?” he asked as he practically skipped over to the table where the vase of Monday’s flowers sat – a particularly vibrant bouquet of navy peonies, wine coloured dahlias and a few soft pink roses.

Felicity nodded as she took the first sip of her coffee, “there is a flower vendor on my walk from the subway station to work.”  
“From now on put them on my expenses every month.”  
She shuffled slightly in her chair, stifling a slight grimace when the action reminded her of last night’s particularly energetic session, “I don’t think…” she started, but stopped when he flashed her a bright smile and raised a finger.

“They brighten up the place, the company should appreciate that, but…” he crooned as he walked back towards her desk, “if you get any problems with accounts, I’ll reimburse you myself.”  
“Thank you Mister Queen,” she smiled graciously.  
He walked to his office and tapped his palm against the surround before he turned and chuckled, “I really wish you would call me Oliver.”

His remarked needed no response and he simply winked and sauntered into his office humming a song Felicity didn’t recognise.

Oliver relaxed into his chair and rocked it back gently as he let the smile affixed to his lips grow up into his cheeks and colour everything in the room with a soft glow.

Last night had been _amazing_ , but even that word didn’t seem descriptive enough.  
_Astounding_  
_Mind-blowing_  
_Stunning_  
All great synonyms but not superlative enough to really get the point across at just how fucking freeing last night was to him.

It wasn’t just the sex – although, cards on the table, that was the best he’d had (and he’d had his fair share, he was young, unattached and rich after all, it was a given that he’d had some astoundingly beautiful women share his bed over the years) – but the sex wasn’t what set this night apart from countless others.

It was _her_ , Megan.  
She read him like a book and he was in no doubt that she had him pegged from the moment he walked into that room.  
She understood him.  
Offered him a place where he was sure he could express himself without shame.  
But the best part, was that _she_  enjoyed it too.

Most men could find a sweet little thing who can be moulded, seduced and perhaps she would give him freedom to express what he wanted, but it was altogether different – to Oliver at least – to find someone who enjoyed it _just as much_.

That was the true meaning of this lifestyle.  
He had power, influence and a smile he’d been told could get him almost anything he wanted.

It would be easy to convince, coerce or guide a woman to sleep with him – he was pretty sure he could make any forms of indecent proposals to most of the women in this building (and that wasn’t him being cocky, it was him being realistic, he knew what he had and how to use it) and his home run statistics would be pretty damn impressive.

But aside from being a HR nightmare, making him a disgusting pig, and likely (if he was honest) some form of a sexual predator – it wasn’t real.

Someone who trusted you, had yours in return and wanted to be there for no other reason than they enjoyed it just as much as you, _that_ was real.

 _That_ was what made Oliver smile like the cat that got all the milk as he rocked in his chair, stared at the cityscape and breathed the minutes away.

“Mister Queen,” the pleasant voice of his secretary plucked his interest away from the window while she stood in the doorway, tablet in hand.  
“Come in Felicity, everything okay?” he answered, refusing to dampen the smile of his face – even if he was so certain she would blush if she knew why it was there.

“Mister Merlyn is on line one, but we have to go over your calendar before your ten am board meeting.”  
He straightened his back and thought carefully for a moment, like a game of Tetris in his head.  
“Put Tommy through, we’ll go through the calendar in thirty minutes before I head to the board meeting,” he announced proudly.

Only Felicity seemed to crinkle her nose at him as her lips parted to speak, closed, then reopened, “Mister Queen, it’s nine forty five.”  
“No it’s not,” he laughed, flopping back in his chair, “I just got in and gave you that coffee like five minutes ago.”  
He watched her smile and try to hide it behind a concerned look before she gave up and just coughed the laugh loose, “that was _forty-five_ minutes ago.”

Oliver looked at the clock across the room and stood bolt upright.  
_Shit_.  
He’d sat staring out the window thinking about Megan for forty-five fucking minutes.

“Okay, new plan,” he cleared his throat and ran a finger under the collar of his baby blue shirt, “leave Tommy on hold, he’ll survive. Now let’s see how quickly we can run through the calendar,” he clapped his hands together and rubbed them before he gestured for Felicity to take a seat.

She sauntered into the room and sat on the same chair she did every day, the one on the left hand side of Oliver so he could sit back and listen to her without the computer screen on his right being in the way.

He was also pretty certain she sat there because she knew he was prone to be distracted looking out the window – _case in point, the forty-five minutes he’d just lost._

He watched her smooth down the line of her grey dress with a square panel of orange either side of her narrow waist. They looked like handles, like if the woman you were seeing was wearing that dress the orange was where you placed your hands to pull her to the edge of the desk and just…

He stopped his thoughts with a cough and a quick shake of his head before he allowed himself one last excite – _how good would Megan look in that dress?_

“Are you ready Mister Queen?” Felicity asked as she guided her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. When he nodded she looked down at her tablet and her long, blonde ponytail fell softly over her shoulder.

Oliver absolutely had to admit she was pretty and he found himself hoping she had a nice boyfriend. Maybe that was who she saw on Tuesday nights. They probably had a movie night on the couch in coordinating pyjamas.

The idea of it made Oliver smile.  
He liked that idea for her.

“The board meeting is, as you know,” she effused, looking up only briefly to flash him a smile, “at ten so you need to take the draft proposals that technical put together with you.”  
“Which is?”  
“In your compendium,” she answered almost immediately.  
“Which is?” he laughed.  
“On the side board behind you.”  
Oliver spun 180° to spot the black folder with Queen Consolidated emblazoned in navy and silver on the front.  
“Excellent,” he commended as he spun back around.

“You have lunch with your mother today.”  
Oliver sucked in air between his grimaced lips, “I do?”  
“Yes,” Felicity laughed, “and no, you can’t reschedule.”  
He blew out a petulant sigh before an idea twinkled in his eye, “you should come.”

Felicity looked up from her tablet expressionless.  
“No, I’m serious, she likes you, you should come,” he excitedly tapped his finger on the desk pad, “I’ll pay you overtime.”  
“She’s your mother.”  
“You’re right, triple, I will pay you triple.”  
“I don’t think your mother wants to have lunch with her son and his EA,” Felicity jested as her long, dark nails combed through the tips of her honey hair.  
“Why?” he joked, raising his palms to the ceiling, “she’s always saying she wants to meet the women in my life.”

Felicity swallowed a lump that caught in her throat as she thought about the carnality in Oliver’s eyes last night. She watched his shoulders flex behind the draping designer shirt as she wondered if the marks she’d left on him were still there.

Had he seen them that morning when he showered?  
Had his thick fingers traced the length of the scratches while he found himself getting hard?  
Had he taken his long, thick shaft in his tight grip and thought about how it looked ploughing into her?

 _Jesus, fucking, Chris_ , Felicity her brain screamed at her as she felt a familiar warmth building between her legs.

She crossed them tighter and tried to bury the thoughts.  
She wasn’t supposed to have thoughts like that.

“The budget is due in two weeks,” she continued, touching two fingers to her cheek as they reddened while she prayed Oliver wouldn’t notice, “and you have a walkthrough around the division at three.”  
“ _That_ ,” he smiled, his eyes quizzically studying the way she was brushing the pads of her fingers across her cheek, _was she blushing_? “you should definitely come to.”  
Felicity looked up and smiled graciously, “that I will accept.”

“Perfect Felicity,” he sighed, satisfied, “is that all?”  
Felicity stood and straightened the skirt of her dress while Oliver tried not to watch, “Yes Mr Queen, that’s all.”  
“Thank you,” he jostled his shoulders and looked across at his phone, “you can put Tommy through.”  
“Oh,” she popped with soft lips around the sound, “you see that red flashing light?” she continued as she half leaned on his desk and pointed to his phone.

He breathed in her perfume and let the subtle notes of jasmine fill his sense, _Jesus that smelled comforting_ , before he moved his eyes to where she pointed.  
“I do,” he breathed out before taking another, deeper inhale.  
“If you push that you can talk to whoever is on hold.”

Her upper body was almost tipped flat against his desk and her face was surprisingly close to his. He’d never seen her that close and he’d never notice just how light her eyes were. He watched her blink and then suddenly pull back like she had felt they were instantly too close, or because, maybe, she had caught him staring – _was he staring?_

“Thank you,” he said as he watched her back towards the door.  
“You’re welcome,” she quietly responded as she reached for the door handle, “given the board meeting is in ten minutes would you like me to interrupt when you need to leave?”  
Oliver nodded, “yes please.”  
“Then I’ll let you know.”

Felicity heard the words the instant they came from her mouth, but it was too late to take them back and she couldn’t very well cover over them because that would only raise that pinched brow of his even higher.

He recognised the exact same wording from last night and there was nothing she could do to retract it, except try her best to make it look like she had no reason to retract them.  
_Nothing to see here._

Oliver shook his head at the coincidence as Felicity stepped out and closed the door behind her.

 _Coincidence was a tricky mistress._  
Sometimes she had you seeing connections that didn’t exist and other times she had you believing those that did exist were nothing but fanciful feelings.

“Tommy,” he spoke as he picked up the receiver and hung it against his ear.  
“Your hold music sucks,” Tommy remarked bitterly, “you know what you should have?”  
Oliver heard the perk in Tommy’s voice and he could pretty much predict what Rake was going to come out with.  
“Enlighten me,” he groaned.  
“That cute sounding EA of yours reading a naughty book.”  
“Thomas,” Oliver gritted.  
His friend, as great as he was, was not the guy that Felicity would sit on the couch in coordinated pyjamas with, _not now, not ever._  
“Honestly, I need to meet her.”  
“Not happening.”  
“As soon as I get back, I think we should do lunch, I’ll come to your office and…”  
“You’re not her type,” Oliver bickered protectively.

“Fine, fine,” Tommy sighed, although Oliver knew it wouldn’t be the last he heard about it, “how was last night, with Megan?”  
Oliver couldn’t help but smile when he heard her name and he was glad that no one was in the room to witness it.

“It was great, she didn’t bite me or sniff my ass so automatically better than the last set up.”  
He listened to Tommy cackle unrepentantly down the phone, “some people love that you know.”  
“I’m sure they do,” Oliver dryly remarked.  
“So, you’ll see her again?”  
Oliver didn’t need to think about it, but he let his mind dwell on the idea of seeing her again anyway.  
“I hope to.”  
“Good, great, I’m glad,” Tommy replied genuinely.

There was a knock on the door and Oliver knew it was time to wrap it up.  
“I have to go and run a division of a global corporation or something,” Oliver jested, “we’ll talk later.”  
“You could just put me back across to…”  
“Goodbye Tommy,” Oliver interrupted, “and thanks.”  
“You’re welcome.”

Oliver hung up the phone, grabbed his compendium and walked briskly out of his office.  
“I should be out of the dragon meeting before my lunch date,” he mocked as he sauntered across the front of Felicity’s desk, “let me know if you change your mind on joining us.”  
“Absolutely Mister Queen,” she simpered with a smile that brightened her eyes.

He was waiting at the elevator doors less than a minute later when he pulled his phone from his pocket and the white card from his wallet. He typed quickly as the elevator doors opened. He blindly stepped in and they closed him in before he pushed send and slipped the phone back into his pocket and the card back into his wallet.

Felicity heard her bag buzz from the bottom draw and she knew exactly what it was, given her _everyday_ phone was on her desk beside her.

She pulled the small, simple phone from a pocket in her bag and checked the message while holding it tight to her lap.

**Bruce: I had fun last night. Next week is your pick. I look forward to being at your mercy.**

Felicity looked up instinctively before she smiled and typed her perfectly ambiguous response.

**Megan: you have no idea.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The position is a reverse variation on the couch canoodle. You're welcome.


	5. The Whispered Confession

****

 

**[Tuesday, 3 December 2013]**

Oliver was waiting for Felicity that Monday when she walked around the corner. It was a surprise, but one that made her smile behind the bouquet of lilies. He was leaning against her desk, his legs angled out ahead of him and lazily crossed at the ankle. His arms were banded across his broad chest making his already impressive arms appear even bulkier.

His stance was not unlike the one he’d adopted last Tuesday when he stood against the back wall of the room they shared while she prepared the bed, lining up each ‘toy’ in the order she would use them in. She had watched his smile grow when she walked in slingback stilettos towards him with a cock ring presented in the palm of her hand.

He had trusted her that night, allowed her to give him what he needed with his hands bound above his head and his ankles harnessed, she had inflicted slow, measured strikes with a crop, glided a pinwheel deliciously slow up the inside of his thigh and tortured him with her warm lips and curious tongue for twenty minute stretches to watch his cock throb underneath the ring until his brow was coated in sweat and his body shook against the restraints.

Her name had trembled from his lips each time she released the adjustable ring and the blood flooded back into the end of his cock, except for the last time when his explosive climax as she rode him came despite the ring.

Felicity felt the flush across her cheeks before she pulled her eyes away from him. The last few weeks had tested her ability to separate Oliver from Bruce and seeing him adopt the same stance made her imagine putting herself between his legs and wrapping her juicy red lips around his….

She shook her head furiously, _now was not the time for that imagery._  
“You’re early Mister Queen,” she remarked as she arranged the flowers in the white ceramic vase.

Oliver pushed off her desk, his eyes travelling down the sweep the zip of her dress took down her back. The tongue wiping slowly across his parched lips was instinctive and he was thankful even when she spoke, Felicity kept her back to him. It had been a week since he’d had his _fix_ and he was beginning to be turned on by everything, the simple zip on his assistant’s dress included.

He forced himself to look away, _he shouldn’t look at her like that._  
“I have something for you,” he hummed, a thinly veiled rasp lacing the last word.  
Felicity heard Bruce and her thighs shivered at what he might _have_.

“Three, two, one…” she breathed to herself, trying to stem the desires that were flooding her every sense.  
Oliver smiled, instantly enamoured by the way her lips moved over silent words she didn’t think he noticed – but he did. Oliver had come to notice more and more about her.

She had at least five laughs:  
First, the slight chuckle when she blew out a light breath and usually touched a finger to her lips, it was the one she used when she was simply being polite, i.e. at every board meeting she dutifully attended with him.

Second, the shoulder jiggle, it was just like the first but her slender shoulders usually moved ever so slightly, she saved this one for lighter moments where the recipient was funny but not funny _enough_ to warrant a three or above.

Third, the tier three laugh was so similar to the second but with one very important difference, it always reached her cheeks usually dusting them in a light peach. One side of her mouth rose higher than the other and she would usually touch her hand to something – the tip of her ponytail, her ear, or the lower slope of her neck. It was a charming laugh and one Oliver enjoyed seeing.

The fourth could only be explained as exuberant, it spread up through her cheeks and sparked her eyes. She would blink to contain it, but it was almost impossible not to see how her eyes brightened and reflected like sapphires when she laughed like this. Oliver had seen it for the first time two Friday’s ago when he’d presented her with a bobble head dog wearing a Kippah, it was probably a little tacky and possibly slightly offensive but she had laughed this stunning fourth level laugh and placed it next to the spot where she always kept her coffee cup – a pride of place in his opinion

The fifth was as elusive as the Loch Ness Monster, mythical and legendary and Oliver had yet to see it. But he was like one of those crazy guys in a small boat, willing to sink every penny they had into proving it existed.

“Do you want it now?” he asked as he walked towards the window she was near.  
He breathed in and caught the faint smell of rosewater and vanilla as it danced under his nose. His reaction was almost immediate. _Megan was here._

He’d known that smell – _intimately_ in the pitch black room where his eyes had failed him, Oliver had found her like a scent dog. It was utterly unmistakable.

She finished the arrangement and began walking towards her desk when Oliver caught her gently by the elbow. He dropped her immediately when her eyes surveyed the contact before they blinked up at him, full, blue and quizzical.  
“New perfume?” he asked softly before taking another moment to smell the notes of it waft through the air.

Felicity wet her lips as she continued her walk to her desk with a flicker of anxiety twisting her brow. It had been a mistake this morning – or at least she was trying to convince herself it had been – she _never_ opened that drawer in the morning. Megan wore nothing that overlapped with Felicity – her two lives were fundamentally different – and to keep them that way Megan wore a different perfume, used a different shampoo and soap, any unique shades of lipstick and any distinctive eyeshadow colours were also reserved only for her. The only exception was the colour of her nails when there wasn’t time to change it.

This morning after she had secured her hair in an elastic, she had opened Megan’s drawer and lightly spritzed her pulse points with the rich aroma of rosewater and vanilla. She had cursed herself for the mistake but she was running late and had made the decision not to fix the error.

 _Oliver wouldn’t notice_ she had told herself, and yet there was a part of her that was secretly pleased that he absolutely had.

“Yes Mister Queen, just a department store one,” she lied with a skittish smile.

His mind was playing tricks on him.  
It had been for the last four weeks.  
Every Wednesday he’d noticed something new about Felicity, something that made him think of Megan the night before and he was fast becoming disgusted with himself.

Monday’s allowed him to think of her smiles and which one he might be lucky enough to see that day. It wasn’t sexual, at least not by definition. Wednesdays found him considering where she spent her Tuesday nights and whether she would be appalled by where he spent his.

But today his usual Wednesday thoughts were bleeding into Tuesday and he needed to stop.

He walked briskly into his room to put space between himself and Felicity, but she followed him to the doorway and looked, puzzled, down his office at him.  
“Is everything alright Mister Queen?”  
_Call me Oliver, please_ , the title she insisted on was now making him remember the sound of a cracking whip against his upper shoulders.

It hadn’t hurt, it wasn’t hard, but the sound – that sound of artificial taking on flesh – it was sharp and tantric and he couldn’t help hearing it now.

“Of course,” he nodded a little more exaggerated than need be.  
“You,” she paused, sensing his unease – the perfume had the lines across his brow tightly furrowed, “you wanted to give me something?”

Oliver blew out a sigh, he could focus on this. He had to.  
“Yes, sorry,” he gestured for her to come in, tablet in hand, “can we go over the day at the same time?”  
That would help him focus. Focus on work things, not on… _unworky things._

She took her usual spot and Oliver walked around the back of her chair to get to his. His eyes lingered on her smooth, creamy neck and he felt his breath hitch. As though she was aware of his heated stare, Felicity touched a finger to the same spot and he imagined her voice in a soft whisper asking him to kiss it.

He wouldn’t, of course he wouldn’t – _would he?_  
He forced his eyes up just as his nose caught another tease of her perfume.  
_Fuck_.

He was just projecting.  
He had to be.  
He was projecting his excitement at seeing Megan tonight onto Felicity.

He gritted his teeth at his own wayward thoughts as he folded himself into his chair and laid his palms flat on his desk.

“Next year’s projections are due next week,” Felicity started, crossing her legs at the knee since she’d felt his warm breath fan down her neck.  
“And where are we with those?” he asked as he absently moved his hands to undo the button on his gunmetal grey blazer.  
“They’re still with Barry Allen in purchasing for his costings, but I’ll follow up with him today.”  
_Barry_ Oliver’s temple tensed just thinking of the slightly geeky guy with the mix and match patterned shirt/tie ensemble who had, two weeks ago, possibly been trying to flirt with Felicity at her desk.

Oliver had found it, at that time, pitiable. Poor Barry had tried to suavely lean on the edge of her desk but hadn’t counted on his palms being sweaty and her desk being glass so his hand had slid out from underneath him and he’d fallen onto the floor, but not after scattering pens and paperclips across Felicity’s desk.

When Oliver came across the sight he had fought not to laugh but he couldn’t help himself and Felicity had given him a most stern look that had seen him retreat the smile and offer Barry a hand.

He’d thought, momentarily that perhaps Barry Allen was the matching pyjama wearing couch-cuddling type of his EA’s dreams.

But today, with salacious thoughts pummelling his mind, Oliver wanted to fire Barry Allen, just to keep him the fuck away from Felicity.

He’d already briefly considered the HR repercussions of doing just that.

“Its fine, I’ll follow it up,” he answered tersely.  
Felicity looked over the rim of her glasses for a moment before she walked them back up her nose.  
“Mister Queen…” she paused to wet her lips absently.  
_Call me Oliver, call me fucking Oliver, please, you’re killing me here…_  
“…there is no need for you to traipse all the way down to purchasing, I can handle it,” she chuckled – the _first_ one and Oliver sighed when it didn’t pink her cheeks.

“You already do enough,” he countered with a slight pout that didn’t go unnoticed by Felicity.  
If she didn’t know better she would have thought him jealous.  
But he wasn’t.  
Not with her.  
_Megan could make him jealous but not Felicity._  
“It’s my job description, if I don’t do this sort of thing then what do I do?”  
He had a few ideas.  
They were all terrible, unspeakable ones.

He ran a finger across his brow, _was it damp?_ “Quite right Felicity,” he lamented, “please continue.”  
“You have a telephone conference with Mister Gulong this afternoon at three.”  
He nodded along, only half listening if he was honest.  
“Your dry cleaning should be back before five today.”  
Another nod.  
She tapped away on her device, keeping her eyes low and her legs tight.  
“And, uh,” she looked up briefly, their eyes catching in a moment that was far more sweet than it was sensual, “the QC Christmas function is this Friday.”  
“Will we see you there?”  
She smiled, the _second_ tier with a soft nod instead of a shoulder jiggle.

“Good,” he effused honestly, “maybe you can finally call me Oliver,” he joked.  
A _third_ level laugh changed to a _fourth_ and Oliver melted into it.  
It was perfect.  
“You never know,” she answered sweetly as she tucked some stray hair behind her ear.

“Is there anything else?” he asked and Felicity shook her head gently in reply before she stood up.  
“Wait,” Oliver called as he flew up from his chair and followed her the few steps she’d covered towards the door, “this,” he smiled as he took a white envelope from his pocket and held it out to her.

Felicity looked at the envelope cautiously before she took it from his hand, careful to make sure they didn’t touch.  
“It’s a bonus,” he laughed kindly as he noted her subtle reluctance.  
“From IT?” she asked as she studied the crisp white lip of it.  
“No, from me. You will get another one from the IT department for your work with them before coming here.”  
Felicity chewed her lip absently.  
“I haven’t been in this position long enough to…” her brow pinched, she knew how the salary and bonuses in the company worked.  
“Oh, it’s from me, personally,” Oliver explained, his voice becoming less assured and more nervous, “you’ve been invaluable.”

Felicity felt a pang of guilt.  
Oliver was delirious on sex with Megan and now he was giving away his personal fortune like an addicted junky.  
“Oh, well then, I can’t…” she offered the envelope back to him but Oliver tucked his hands into his pocket, “…you shouldn’t.”  
“Felicity,” he smiled, bright, genuine, kind, “honestly I was a bit of a professional hot mess before you started in the beginning of October, this is a selfish gift,” he continued as he winked down at the envelope drooping from her hand.

“And how is that?” she asked with one raised brow.  
“I don’t want to lose you Felicity.”  
She knew it was just words, simply words, given on a professional level but for just a moment Felicity thought she saw something else hiding behind the threads of navy in his eyes.

Oliver breathed softy after he let the words float from his mouth.  
There was something hidden amongst them that even he wasn’t prepared to admit.

“Word is spreading,” he continued while he straightened his blazer’s arms, “I don’t want you to be poached. Please take it.”  
His hands brushed against hers as he guided the envelope back towards her.

Her skin was warm and beautifully soft but Oliver had never imagined it would be anything else.  
“Well thank you,” she answered graciously before the tips of her lips pulled up into a smile, “but I don’t intend to be lost.”

He kept his hand against hers a lot longer than he needed to, but Felicity didn’t flinch and he didn’t retract. They just stood there, coupled at the hand, staring silently at each other until Felicity severed it with a blink.

“Thank you Mister Queen.”  
His hand slipped from around hers as she took a step backwards.  
“You’re welcome Felicity.”

They went their separate ways, Felicity to the safety of her desk where she felt the moral ambiguity of her choice to continue a relationship with _Bruce_ and Oliver to the embrace of his desk chair and the view across the city scape that often listened to his mind’s thoughts, however intimate they may be.

He let his eyes lapse close as he thought about tonight with Megan, her strong legs coiled around his body. He wet his lips as he imagined bringing her here to this very room, having her spread across his desk. He could smell the aroma of her heated sex and he could see her pink flesh, swollen and glistening with arousal. He could imagine her legs bent over the edge of the desk with her legs spread as wide as she could stand and her ankles bound to opposite legs of his desk.

He would roll his chair up to her in the complete silence of an empty building. The sound of the wheels across the marble tiles would make her whimper in anticipation. He would kiss her thighs so slowly she would writhe against the restraints. He would appease her with a finger circling her entrance only to withdraw it again.

He would watch her suck in her breath with a waved roll of her stomach as she tried to still the hunger and the need growing between her folds.

He would listen to her beg for him to feast and he would hold off as long as he could – until his own urges took over and he devoured the only lips he was allowed to kiss.

He would watch her up the centre of her body as she played with her own breasts, teasing and toying with them.

He would kiss the same line up her body, his fingers now thrusting in and out of her tight entrance. He would feel every part he could reach and delight in the way she constricted around him.

He would kiss every inch of her chest and make her cry out when he took her nipple with his teeth. He would stare at the thin threads of her throat as her head fell backwards. His hand would dwarf her neck when he pressed his fingers in around it like she would ask him. Then he’d slip his hand around the back and raise her neck so she could see his fingers plunging in and out of her.

He’d watch as her blonde hair would spill over his arm and down the back of his desk. He’d study the blueness in her eyes and the trust he found there.

He’d fuck her with his fingers until she came on them with tight breaths holding his name.  
_Oliver, Oliver, Oliver._

God she would be beautiful.  
Her orgasm would glisten her skin and paint her face in a pinkish glow.  
He’d bend down and take her lips with his own for the first time.  
She wouldn’t reprimand him.  
She would kiss him back.

He’d brush back the golden hair glued to her face and cupping it, he’d whisper her name like it was a secret … _Felicity_.

Oliver’s eyes slammed open and his chair jolted as he sat upright with a bolt of sweat across his brow.

It wasn’t Megan tied to his desk.  
It wasn’t Megan keening into his attentions.  
It wasn’t Megan whose spend was coating his fingers.  
_It wasn’t Megan._

 _Shit._  
He picked up his phone and dialled a number you wouldn’t find in his rolodex.

* * *

  
**[That Night]**

Megan was waiting at the bar for Oliver when he arrived that night. He walked slowly through the crowd taking a moment to appreciate her as she sensed him and tipped her head over her bare shoulder to watch his approach.

The music felt like a heartbeat pulsing through the main room where green tinged lights flocked the stages and lithe bodies draped over black leather couches. He adjusted the mask across his eyes as his brow grew hot and damp underneath it.

He brushed through a small crowd that were huddled around a woman who clearly enjoyed a sort of _crowd funded_ orgasm. There was no intercourse in the truest sense of the word, but partakers took part in stimulating various erogenous areas until she found her release.

But Oliver paid it no mind, not even looking when the sound of the woman’s pleasure became louder than the music dancing through the room. His eyes stayed on Megan.

Her shoulders were bare, just as he liked them, reminiscent of mountains made of ivory porcelain. Her billowing dark hair that usually floated over the ivory mountains was pulled back into a ponytail that sat high at her crown – she had indulged his request he sent her earlier in the day. His mouth flooded with saliva as he imagined twisting that tail around his fist and then watching as he would pull the elastic free.

As he walked nearer she stood from her perch and floated her pearlescent green nails down the tight leather corset that pushed her breasts firm against her chest, barely containing them, and cinched in at her waist. He had seen the ribbon that laced up the back of it moments before and he couldn’t help but imagine coiling his fingers around it.

A dangerous smile threaded across his lips as his eyes followed her hand while it glided over her hips and skimmed the white scalloped edge where the paper thin black panties tickled her thighs. Even in this light he could almost see through them as he imagined the rosy pink folds of her sex just waiting for his touch. Just the idea of that made his steps quicken and before he could fully appreciate the curve of her legs and the teetering heights of her heels, Oliver was standing in front of her, patting his lips together in desire.

“You’ve missed me?” she smiled, it was a question that needed no answer and Oliver simply dropped a sigh as her fingers scratched down his jaw.  
She rocked against the erection he wasn’t trying to stem as she leaned in and pressed her lips to his ear, “would you like me to take care of that now?” she whispered while her fingertips traced the outline it made in his pants.

“Here?” he rasped, his index finger skimming over the satin ribbon around her wrist.  
She pulled back and feed her hand down his pants as she bit the corner of her smile. She rubbed him slowly, with even strokes, until his eyes began to glaze over.

Felicity could feel him growing harder in her hand as his body heat bled into her palm.

“I could use my mouth if you prefer,” she watched as he swallowed down his surprise and a smile rose up across his lips, “people will enjoy watching it, watching how I’ve learned to take you,” she continued, smiling at the way his breath hitched and rasped in his throat.

She gripped him at the head and rolled her thumb over the tip, “would you like that Bruce?”  
_Call me Oliver_ his brain pleaded but thankfully the words never came close to his mouth.

“Not tonight,” he replied between splintered breaths, “you wanted to stay out here tonight.”  
He watched her smile grow, impish and coy, as she pulled her hand from his pants and nestled it against his.  
“Come with me,” she spoke before she teased her lips with her tongue.

He followed her dutifully past the dancefloor and towards a stage in one corner of the room. Oliver spent only a little time in the Foyer as it was aptly called but what little time he did spend in it he would usually stay near the bar and watch the stages from a distance.

But Megan had other ideas and he followed her complicity. The stage of mirrored black stood about two feet above them. On the stage was a black s-shaped chaise that allowed for a variety of different positions with ease and a couple wearing nothing but masks and, in her case, bright red heels.

The woman, a curvaceous beauty with olive skin, was draped, face down, over the higher end of the chaise, her legs spread and her back arched enough that those watching could see the fullness of her breasts.

The man was stood behind her thrusting himself inside her as he also penetrated her puckered hole with a purpose-built dildo. The woman’s face showed a flush of pleasure framed by a hint of pain as she praised him with her words.

Felicity leaned into Oliver’s chest, enjoying the way he took her weight without wavering as she guided his hand down under the wisp of fabric that covered her thrumming sex. He kissed her neck slowly as she worked his rough fingers between her folds.

In all honesty Felicity had spent so much of the day thinking about his fingers, their length and thickness and the slightly calloused pads of his middle finger and his thumb, that the instant he touched her sweltering sex she was like putty in his _adept_ fingers.

He gently bit the threads of her neck as his middle finger dipped inside her entrance and paused there. She clenched around him, desperate to swallow more of him inside, but his finger didn't move.

“You like watching?” he asked as Felicity’s eyes stayed locked to the stage.  
“Yes,” she admitted under a warm breath and Oliver sunk his finger deeper inside her as a reward.  
Her innocent pink lips fell open with a silent gasp as Oliver rode his finger in and out.  
“Would you be on the stage?” he asked, hints of jealousy coursing through both his veins and his words as he spoke them – he wasn’t sure that he would be able to share her with anyone else – even if it was only their eyes.  
“Yes.”  
The word was smoky, almost purred and Oliver added a second digit inside her in response.  
“What would you have us do?” he asked softly, the words passing up her neck and into her ears alone.

Felicity’s eyes fluttered as her breasts ached under the confines of her corset. While she enjoyed watching it, she didn’t want the exposé of the show going on in front of them. She imagined herself dressed in a gown that draped down her body like liquid fabric, spilling away at the waist.

He would have her because the urgency to have her had become all too much. It was not so much a show or a spectacle but more that everyone else in the room had become irrelevant.

The need with which he would take her would be everything – lust, passion, need, want, desire, anguish, desperation – like every decision came down to that moment.

“A moment,” she whispered vaguely, though Oliver rewarded her all the same as his thumb weaved and circled her clit.

Her eyes hung heavy as Oliver continued to kiss the ridgeline of her shoulder, bathing his nostrils in the heavenly scent that had tormented him earlier today. His fingers grew wet with her arousal as he leaned in close to her ear and softly described the show she had lost behind her falling lids.  
“Her eyes are turning back towards him, the tops of her breasts are flushed candy red and her knuckles are turned white on the edges,” Oliver whispered, building up the speed of the three digits thrusting deeper inside her wetness.  
“And him?” she asked, her eyes now fully closed as her walls began to crumble around Oliver’s fingers.  
“He’s moving fast and deep, her legs are buckling around him, he’s holding her at the waist, pulling her back onto him,” he continued, peppering hot kisses at the seam of her ear, “come apart first Megan,” he rasped as he plunged his fingers right to the last knuckle and flattened his thumb against her clit.

He felt her body tremble around him and her knees begin to buckle. His other arm banded across her waist and pulled her tight against him.

Her nails dug into the outside of his thighs, and Oliver took the pain with a smile and a sharp intake of air, as her climax hit like a sudden bolt of lightning. It wasn’t long but it was ferocious, drenching Oliver’s fingers and making Felicity shudder against the pillar of his chest.

Slowly, he eased her through it, dropping from three digits to two and then to one, one left to stir through her silky release.

He loosened his grip across her waist as she turned slowly to face him.  
“Thank you,” she panted softly as her chest glistened in a veil of sweat, “for indulging me.”  
“Your pleasure is mine,” he replied before he licked her release from his fingers.

“We still have the rest of the night,” she hummed as she weaved her fingers down the sides of his shirt, emulating how her fingers might travel.  
“I was wondering perhaps, if you might indulge one of my fantasies.”

“What did you have in mind?” she inquired as she straightened the opened collar of his shirt.  
“A specialty room,” he replied with husky notes and rapacious eyes.

The curiosity dilated Felicity's pupil and made the rich brown of them appear even darker. There were seven speciality rooms located in the basement of Verdant, which wasn’t as seedy as it sounded.

They were booked out for the night and porters could arrange them however you wanted insofar as many of the props were moveable allowing the room to be altered slightly to appease a person’s specific tastes – almost like a novelty hotel room at an amusement park, but sexier.

You didn’t have to be a member to hire one of these rooms as the basement had a second entrance allowing anyone that wanted to fuck their significant other – or a stranger off the street – the freedom to do so for a hefty price tag, but still cheaper than a membership upstairs.

There was the Fantasy Suite – which could be anything from an enchanted forest to a dragon’s den depending on lighting and props selected.

The Island – which was carefully designed to replicate the Blue Lagoon.

An 18th Century Pirate room for a fantasy novel escape.  
The Cosmos, the Examination Room, a Medieval Suite, all aptly named for the fetishes and fantasies they played into.

And lastly the Professional Room – which could be set up as a library or an office. It was most often used when someone wanted to role play a secretarial or daddy kink or an occasional threesome with the ‘librarian’.

Felicity had seen only one when Wolfe had visited her shortly after her arrival in Starling.

“Which one?” she asked coyly, letting her eyes drape heavily as his fingers dipped below the fabric of her corset and skimmed across her coiled nipple, “I’m not very good at damsel in distress.”  
Her voice strained against the rasped breaths his ardent teasing was forcing her to take.  
“Can I show you?” he asked.

She nodded, the slight hesitation in his voice making the idea all the more appealing.

* * *

  
A series of doors, velvet ropes and a flight of stairs later found him opening the door to the Professional Room.

Her eyes roamed around the dimly lit room, slowly adjusting to the warm but low glow of the few lamps but when Oliver asked if she wished him to brighten the dimmers she shook her head with a swish of hair as she preferred the room dark.

Old books lined shelves behind an red-oak desk, lacquered and polished so you could see a somewhat watery reflection in it. Brushed wallpaper coated the walls and erotic artwork stimulated the eyes. It was nothing like the modern space of Oliver's office but the inference was clear.

“You want to have sex with your secretary,” she breathed, turning her head to watch him as she glided silently through the room, “a secretary,” she corrected fluidly.

Oliver felt his temperature raise as the urge to take her right now, on all fours and then lick her clean, became almost unbearable. He tugged at the cuffs of his shirt as he watched her turn near a small meeting table with two rolled armchairs.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Felicity all day since he’d imagined it was her coming undone on his desk. The entire day he had spent hating himself for his lascivious thoughts. Felicity was sweet, kind and smart and today all he could think about was kissing up her legs and wondering if he could make her come in his mouth.

All he could assume was that his libido was so heightened at the prospect of seeing Megan again that he was merely projecting that desire onto Felicity. It wasnt completely insane and perhaps entwining the two by having Megan role play as his secretary might get the idea out of his system.

After all, his secrets were safe with her.

“Yes,” he admitted, “the idea. Does that...is that alright?”

She touched a finger thoughtfully to her lips before beckoning Oliver towards the chair. _Perhaps she had given it the same thought that he had._

Oliver sauntered towards her, stopping just in front. She smiled as her fingers toyed with the closure of his tailored pants.  
“Everything is alright provided we both consent,” she answered as her nails sunk in against his thighs, over the marks she had left there earlier, before she walked his pants down his legs.

He hissed darkly as he toed off his shoes and kicked away his pants and briefs. She cupped his semi-erect member in her palm and gently coaxed it with hard strokes from the other hand.

“Sit down, Bruce,” she purred his name, reverberating it through her throat.  
It was something that excited him, but grounded her in the fantasy.  
This was Bruce and she was Megan.  
Within these confines, that was all that mattered.

Oliver did as she requested and folded himself into the weathered chair. He listened to the sound of the leather cracking underneath his weight and watched it crease as his fingers gripped the edge of the arms.

Felicity perched her body on the edge of his knees with her back towards him. She hummed as she tilted her hips and let his tip glide over her panties and between her legs.

He pulled her hair to one side as he slowly kissed her neck, savouring the enchantingly sweet flavour of her skin.  
“Innocent?” she asked softly, relishing the slow strokes of his tongue near her neck.  
“A little, but confident.”  
She listened to his instructions with slightly frayed ears.  
“Young?”  
He slowly pulled the ends of her corset’s ribbon laces, “as you are.”  
“Naive?”  
His fingers gently unravelled the laces while he considered her question, “No,” he finally answered, “reserved,” he offered instead.

Felicity continued to nod as the last loops of the laces came apart and the leather slipped from her body. Her nipples, bruised superficially by the friction of her outfit and her arousal, tingled as slightly warmed air licked against them.

“I think I understand,” she breathed, as his fingers traced the length of her spine.  
She stood up and faced him, her stance a little lopsided and her fingers gingerly toying with the ends of her hair.  
“Do you find me pretty?” she began, a subtle chuckle carried with her breath.  
“Very,” he rasped his impetuous answer.  
A single finger circled her nipple, like a slow orbit, “I’ve seen you look at me.”  
She found pleasure in her hands and her chest glowed a soft pink.

“You have?”  
His eyes watched her while his pillowed lips softly smacked together.  
A tiny gasp as her finger pinched her budded rose, “everyday your eyes grow more adventurous.”  
He found his fingers tracing the air around him, mimicking the way hers moved down her chest.  
“Does that scare you?” he asked, gravel deep in his throat.

Felicity straddled him, smiling coyly as she opened his shirt and peppered chaste kisses across the top of his chest.  
“No,” a sigh melted into his skin, “it doesn’t scare me.”

His fist twisted around her ponytail before he tugged it to one side. Her head jarred to the side and he caught the threads of her elongated neck and kissed it ravenously until his lips were huddled around her earlobe and his tongue was playing with the dainty earring that hung there.

“Does it excite you?” he whispered with feathered words.  
She trapped the corner of her lower lip between her teeth and tipped the other side up into a smile to match the soft arch of her brow.  
“Very much so,” she hummed after her lip sprung free, “I wonder what you think about, how you picture me.”

He gently tugged her hair down towards her ass, drawing her head back and stretching her chest while her back arched to accommodate. He traced the line of her chest with his supple kisses before sweeping his tongue across her nipples, swarming and them teasing them as she keened with tiny gasps.  
“I think about filling you,” he paused, _Felicity_ , “about seeing your body blush underneath me.”  
He released her hair and her head tipped forward, her eyes meeting his with vivid curiosity  
“I think about feeling every inch of you,” he admitted, finally hearing himself say what he had began to realise for some time now was a release like no other.

Felicity worked her lips down the ridges and valleys of Oliver's chest, enjoying the way his body twitched around her.  
“How?” she asked, looking up the same line she had just kissed.  
“Across my desk,” he sighed as his head tipped backwards when her lips met with the base of his cock, “against the window,” he added almost breathless.  
“Tell me about that one,” she requested as she slipped from his lap and nestled her body between his spread legs.

“Your skirt is raised to your waist,” he began, letting his lids draw heavy across his eyes, “your shirt is open and your breasts, still wet from my kisses, hang over your bra.”  
She moaned softly as she licked her tongue from his base to his tip in one, long line.  
“Are they swollen?” she asked, mischief looping her words and her smile.  
“Yes, quite,” a breathy chuckle, “but you like that. You brush them against the cool glass and gasp.”  
She kissed his tip lightly and languidly, “does the sound I make excite you?”  
“Yes it’s almost enough for me to…” his words fade away but she didn’t need them, she knew what he was confessing.

A soft chuckle warmed his rod as her breath misted across it.  
“And then what?” she asked, pulling a rasp from his chest as her tongue guided his tip through her pouted lips while her eyes watched him fervently.  
“I take your hips,” he started, his tone like a haunting whisper, “nestle the curve of them against my palm.”  
He took a breath, deep and undulated and he could almost feel the velvet softness of her skin melting into his rough hands.

She took him deeper, brushing his tip against the roof of her mouth with deliberate leisureliness as her cheeks hollowed around him.  
Oliver continued, his tone gravelly and stunted, “you guide my cock towards your entrance, brushing it between your ass.”

Her lips encased him fully, her mouth a warm and wet cavern of decadence as her tongue flicked the underside of his shaft, sending trickles of pleasure down his thighs.

He watched her closely, the dark tint of her plush lips in contrast to his paled and taut skin was an erotic vision that had his knuckles whitening against the chocolate leather.  
“I ease into you, you’re warm and tight,” the words drip from his mouth like a whispered confession between sinner and saint.

She hummed, the sensation of it echoing down his shaft and making him groan helplessly. He wrestled a hand from the arm of the couch and toyed with the elastic in her hair before he pulled it free.

He watched, near on delirious, as her hair spilled over his thighs like a blanket and for just a moment, _a split second in time_ , he imagined it golden, like the colour of honey. He combed through her silky tresses as her bobbed the length of his shaft and her fingers teased his balls.

She took a chance and pinched one gently with her nails, making Oliver curse with surged pleasure.  
“Again,” he gritted, desperate to feel that biting snap of gratifying pain once more.  
She obliged and Oliver, more aware and prepared for it, almost howled at the masochistic sensation.

His body catapulted to the edge of release when his eyes screwed shut and his jaw fell open with ragged breaths all while his fingers traced the dip of her hollowed cheek.

He could feel the rippling up his thighs and the thrumming down his spine when he finally stilled his rampant breathing enough to beg her for approval.  
“Pl-please,” he stammered, focusing himself as best her could.

Felicity smiled around his trembling member as she continued to feed him in and out of her mouth. With one hand she gently massaged his swollen balls while the other hand weaved as far up his chest as she could reach, her fingertips swimming in the perspiration that drenched his skin until she clamped her nails into his flesh and dragged them back down.

The mix of warm, wet, gentle and rough sent Oliver almost toppling from his ledge until Felicity abruptly pulled away, severing all and any contact with him for a few seconds until she gripped the head of his cock tightly and pressed the pad of her thumb into his tip.

She stared at him with intent eyes as she whispered with smoky words, “hold it Bruce, delay yourself.”  
He nodded, tunnelling his breathing and tensing the muscles of his taint until the burning need for gratification eased even though the throbbing desire remained.

“Good,” she assured him with a smile as she pulled her thumb away, scooping up just a few drops that pooled at his tip, “very good,” she added as she sucked the beads from her thumb and stood up.

“The longer you can deny yourself the easier it will become to separate orgasm from ejaculation,” she brushed her fingers down his engorged length, “and if you can do that then you’ll unlock the secret to multiple orgasms.”

His arm banded around her back and he pulled her nearer, trapping a tight and peached nipple between his lips. He kissed her hurriedly and somewhat sloppily before she braced her body against his shoulders and pushed herself away.

She kept her eyes on his and a smile floated across her lips as she walked a few feet away, just out of reach of his outstretched arm. She slipped her panties over the curve of her rear and thighs before letting them drop, unaided, around her ankles.

With practiced ease she kicked them free before walking seductively to the imposingly large desk, the focus of the room. Felicity unknotted the ribbon that had been wrapped multiple times around one wrist, the _look but don’t touch_ symbol, before holding it pinched between her thumb and forefinger and letting it drape, slightly twisted, down from there.

“Where do you want to put it?” she smiled, nodding towards the ribbon for context but leaving the double entendre where it lay.

Oliver walked wordlessly towards her, his eyes enraptured in her lips. He was fascinated by them and mesmerised with not only the way they spoke the words but, in a much more heightened sense, by the actual words that came from them.

She spoke like no one he’d ever met. She knew what she wanted or what other people wanted and she issued both with so much command that he didn’t foresee a time where he would ever disobey them.

Megan read him like no other woman ever had. Every cue he offered consciously or otherwise she saw and toyed with perfectly.

She had the ability to both make him lose his mind and simultaneously discover it anew.

He took the ribbon from her and glided it sensuously over her shoulder as he walked behind her. He guided both her svelte arms behind her back, making a V with her wrists pressing together at the point.

A single kiss warmed her neck as he wrapped the ribbon once around her joined wrists. A second kiss saw him bind them with two more loops. After gentle nip at the base of her neck Oliver tightened the restraint with two more passes around her wrists.

She hummed at his keenness as he threaded the last pass of the ribbon between her wrists and tied off the two ends.

“You’re quite practiced at that,” she smiled, thrilled at how little give the bind had.  
“Sailing,” he whispered amidst a chuckle before he pressed her body into the edge of the desk with his own.

His hand walked between her legs, guiding them apart before his feet widened her stance. His fingers slipped between her folds and Oliver smiled when her warm arousal coated them.  
“You’re still warm,” he grinned before peppering a flurry of kisses across her neck.  
“For you,” she breathed so quietly he almost missed it.

He leaned against her and opened the drawer near where her fingers overlapped the bevel of the desk. Inside he found a tray of condoms, a silk pinstripe tie and a pair of woman's black-framed glasses, not too dissimilar to the ones tonight's object of his desires wore.

“Do you want me to wear them?” Felicity asked as she watched Oliver’s fingers hover cautiously just above the glasses.  
“No,” the word ghosted down her arm as he spoke it.  
He closed the drawer slowly and fitted the condom over his thrumming shaft.

He entered her slowly, listening to the faint gasps that dripped from her lips like warmed honey as she pressed her cheek to the cool desk. His fingers lithely drew down her spine, watching the faint goose bumps that rose in their wake.

He breathed deeply, inhaling her rich perfume until he could taste it as he buried himself, completely seated, inside her, surrounded by her warm and cushioned walls.

He stayed completely still for a moment, relishing each minute spasm or twitch her body made around him until she dropped her hips just enough for an inch to slip from inside her. Before he could mourn the loss, she had taken the inch back, sucking him back with little more than a tilt of her hips.

“You’re eager Miss Megan,” he smiled as he bent over and kissed the ridge of her shoulder.  
“And you delay, Mister Bruce,” she hummed as she repeated the same action she had done only seconds before.

A solitary finger wove down the inside of her arm making Felicity writhe reflexively beneath it until it reached the bind at her wrist and fell onto her succulently pert rear. With a grin sewn onto his expression and a devilish glint in the angelic blue of his eyes, Oliver open-palm tapped her ass.

“Again,” she encouraged as she continued to ride him slowly, _in and out, up and down._  
Oliver tapped her again, a little harder this time, the sound of his palm connecting with the warm flesh of her perfect ass making them both hum delectably.

She dropped her hip before instantly popping it back up, thrusting Oliver inside her much faster than before.  
“Harder,” she urged almost petulantly, desperate to feel the crack of his fingers.  
He indulged her, smacking the same spot a third time before he caught the rhythm of her thrusts and doubled it.

Her breath left her mouth like a strangled sigh as Oliver plunged himself deeper while one hand held her wrists and the other braced himself against the solid desk.

Her whole body shook beneath him just as a faint red mark blushed the round of her ass. Pulling the binds like reins Oliver lifted her from the desk as he continued to take every reachable inch of her body.

Her thighs closed around him which instantly tightened her grip of him. His thrusts became faster and uneven with his base pounding against her clenched cheeks. She moved with him most times and pushed against him at others, the two of their bodies both clashing and in sync as each small change gave another sensation or created more glorious friction between their bodies.

Her head flew back against his chest, her dark hair spilling over his shoulder like a veil as his arm banded around her hips. He held her tight against his body as his fingers dipped between her folds and began tortuously slow circuits of her budded clit.

Her breath hitched in her throat while his lips devoured her neck.

His palm flattened against her mound with his thumb now teasing her budded excite in irregular circles while his fingers delved between her soaking folds.

He found the place where they met, touching it with curious fingers as he recounted what it had looked like from times before.

He kissed the lace of her mask, the first time all night he had really remembered it was even there, hiding something from him when everything else was so open.

His breath misted between the holes in her mask, turning her tepid skin into molten lava as her entire body flushed with her climbing orgasm. She breathed in sharp, short inhales as he filled and stretched her so absolutely.

Her walls tensed and she felt the volcano in her core building, and building, _and building_ when Oliver’s lips encased her ear and his breath ricocheted down her body.

 _Lines get blurred._  
“Come first,” he whispered, like a faint breeze on an autumn’s day brushing words against her ear, “let me feel you.”  
She hummed, her lids closing in around her, the eruption so close she could smell it.

Three more thrusts – plunges deep inside her collapsing walls as his thumb brushed back her hood and danced circles around her clit.

“I need to feel you, I need to know I did this, I made you fall apart,” he continued, his whisper deepening, like a brewing storm.

_Lines get blurred._

She was close, her entire body enraptured with him and every sense she had was tied into his. The smell of his musk beguiled her.  
The taste of their sweat in the air quenched her.  
The heat of his chest burned into her palms.

“I need to know I could do this, that you would let me do this,” he pleaded, unrelenting in his thrusts as his own eyes feel closed.

_Lines get blurred._

“Come for me,” he begged, fighting back his own release, “Fe-li-city.”

Her name left his mouth and moments later the volcano inside her erupted with such force that her body went limp in his arms. The rush of her warmth surrounded him and he finally let himself go. His shoulders jostled forward of their own volition and his toes twisted into the thick piled carpet at the same moment as the warm ribbons of his spend filled the condom.

He never realised his mistake – his Freudian slip – but she did.  
He had called her Felicity, not because he knew who she was behind the mask but because there was someone he _wanted her to be._

As they rode through the waves of their shared climaxes Felicity’s was frayed at the edges by guilt. She had watched Oliver as both Megan and Felicity and while it was never her intent she had confused his lines, subconsciously making him want for someone he never would have before.

He kissed her back gently while he untied the knotted ribbon.

Her wrists wore only superficial red lines that had already began to fade as she collected her strewn clothing.  
“While I’m waiting out that refraction period I can kiss the lips I’m allowed to,” Oliver hummed as he tied off the used condom and threw it in the trash.  
“I have to go,” she breathed quietly as she wrapped a Verdant gown around her body.  
“Are you alright?” he asked as he studied her with concerned eyes.

She nodded softly and a perfected smile blossomed across her lips.  
“Yes,” she answered, although it wasn’t necessarily true.  
She had created her own storm and now she resented the rain.

She brushed a kiss against his warm cheek before she floated from the room.

Oliver couldn’t have both. The Storm would tear him apart.

* * *

  
Oliver was awake, restless, in his bed, staring at the shadows the light from outside his window created on the ceiling of his luxurious Hotel room when the chirp of his phone startled him.

He rolled over, guessing it was probably Tommy yet again forgetting the time difference of wherever he was this week.

But it wasn’t Tommy.  
It was Megan.

**Megan: You are a lighthouse, strong and resilient. People imagine they know what you are from the outside and yet you hide beautiful secrets behind your walls just waiting for someone to discover them. I am a storm. Lighthouses weather storms until they pass so it’s time that I pass. You are ready for someone new, for someone else to discover your secrets. Perhaps we both are.**


	6. The Undoubtable Proposal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Settle in Memoisers (lol) this is a long meaty chapter that takes you up to the night of the QC Christmas Party.
> 
> Please note, to save repeating myself I have only lifted small parts of the party from Chapter 1 and threaded them through the second half of this chapter. It sounds more confusing than it is but that's why this chapter doesn't go over the talk they had in the booth, Oliver sliding his key over the table, the elevator ride or the depth of the moment when she tells him who she is and makes her proposal. Those are all in Chapter 1.
> 
> Okay, enjoy xo

 

The air was palpable that Wednesday morning as Felicity kept her eyes low and shuffled paper from one side of her desk to the other.

There was no animated chat about the flowers and no coffee deposited on her desk. He offered her a barely registerable _Good morning_ and then disappeared behind a closed door – something Oliver had never done in the few months she had sat outside it.

She blew out a sigh as she looked down at the stack of papers with their little yellow and red “sign here” flags – at least three in the pile were important and were needed before lunch (a whole 40 minutes away) so she really needed to venture across the threshold and somehow pretend she didn’t know what was bothering him.

Her message last night hadn’t been her finest moment. Felicity _almost_ always preferred to have any such talk face to face – when you share your inner intimacies with someone, they at least deserved that – but she couldn’t with Oliver, because a part of her didn’t want it to end either.

There was no denying that he met her needs. He read her signals as best as any man could and he was both generous and fulfilling in bed. But Felicity couldn’t shake the feeling she was at some sort of an unfair advantage and that this, in some way she couldn’t extrapolate, made him subconsciously want something he wouldn’t ordinarily – the idea of her, _Felicity_.

He said her name – _not Megan_ – her _actual_ name; and he said it with such guttural need and desire threaded through the word it was as though it wasn’t the first time he had thought, imagined, or said it during such an encounter.

His dealings with her before had been kind, considerate, but platonic. Somewhere along this path the lines had become blurred, he had come to see her as something more while somehow growing in his affections for Megan.

She thumped her forehead with an open palm and groaned.  
It was an insane conundrum that would make even the most level-headed person cross-eyed as they considered the ramifications.

Oliver was having sex with a mistress (in the carnal sense of the word, not the immoral one).  
Oliver was thinking about his reserved EA and playing out the fantasy of her with said mistress.

Said mistress and reserved EA were one and the same.  
_Shit_.

She thumbed her temple and huffed so obtusely that a couple of pages on the stack of paperwork in front of her lifted at the corners.

“I’m going to get some lunch,” Oliver spoke, detached as he hovered a few feet away from her desk.  
She nodded with a feigned smile – unlike Oliver her morose needed to stay behind a wall, “I’ll take your messages.”  
She watched him look down to where his foot was scuffing his shoe along the floor.  
“Would you like anything?” he asked with threads of guilt in his voice.  
“No, thank you,” she quietly replied.  
He offered her a vacant smile and she stilled the pitiful sigh that boiled up her throat – he looked like he had been fired, reprimanded, told off, grounded and sent to the principal’s office all in the span of less than 24 hours.

His cheeks were sullen and his eyes were a cloudy grey – the look of guilt and remorse didn’t suit him well at all.

“Are you okay?” Felicity asked, before pulling at the side of her lip with her teeth, “I know we have this don’t ask, don’t tell policy going on, but, I just…” she sighed, holding back the words _I’m sorry,_ “I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

Oliver’s lips turned up just enough to see a fractured smile before he offered her a half-hearted, “I’m fine, thanks for asking,” automated response.

He tried to keep the smile on his lips for longer, he honestly did, but he was wrestling with thoughts he didn’t know how to compartmentalise and it was giving him a thumping headache.

Megan was well within her rights to call it off with him, she didn’t need a reason and he had no right to demand one – that was part of the allure of this lifestyle, whatever moral judgment you cast over it, it was – at its core – hedonistic. To find and have and take part in pleasure for as long as you see fit.

It wasn’t dating or romance or love.  
These things ended, sometimes abruptly.

 _Only_ , it didn’t make sense, at least not at first when he received the message from her. But in his restless wakefulness something hit him like a tonne of bricks.

 _Felicity_ he had said her name… _had he?_ He wasn’t sure. No matter how many times he replayed the night over in his head it changed. Sometimes he heard Megan come from his constricted throat as his body convulsed against her naked back. Other times he heard nothing but panted breaths and strangled cries. But then sometimes he heard it – _Felicity_ , a name that fell so naturally from his lips, each syllable caressing and forming so beautifully that when his recount let him hear it, he couldn’t help but smile at it.

He couldn’t be certain but there was a possibility he had said her name as he buried himself in the fantasy of it.

Although, here sat his enigma –  
_Was he bothered by saying it because it may have driven Megan away?_  
Or  
_Was he bothered by the guilt of wanting it to be true?_

He needed to talk to Megan.  
But to do that he needed to know who she was.

Oliver checked his watch, turned on his heels and started back towards his office. He didn’t know where in the world Tommy was at this moment but he was going to make the call regardless.

“Mister Queen?” Felicity’s quietly calm words stopped him dead in his tracks.  
He turned his torso to look back towards her.  
“I thought you were going to get lunch,” she said, puzzled by his about face.

He offered her a genuine but short chuckle, “I just remembered I’m not hungry.”

Felicity watched him disappear on listless legs into his office and kick the door closed.

* * *

  
“Fuck Hello?” Tommy mumbled when he answered on the fifth ring.  
“Tell me who she is,” Oliver replied bluntly as he picked the side of his thumb nail with anxious frustration.  
“Well hello the fuck to you too,” Tommy mumbled unpleasantly – meaning Oliver had woken him up.  
“Sorry, is it early?”  
There was some half-heartedness about Oliver’s response, but it seemed enough to elicit a snorted chuckle from his best friend.

“It’s actually like three in the afternoon, but,” Oliver heard the mischief in his voice, “I had a late night.”  
Oliver rolled his eyes, imagining there was probably a harem of attractive woman filling a California King Bed.

“Apologies for the interruption,” Oliver smirked, “but I need to know who Megan is.”  
He listened to his friend sigh dramatically down the phone line.

“You know I can’t,” Tommy replied while he shut himself in the bathroom of the lavish New York hotel.  
“Of course you can,” Oliver argued, “look in the big ledger you have and tell me.”  
“Even if I _could_ , I _can’t_ I don’t know who she is,” Tommy sighed as he ran a finger across the dark circle forming under his eye while he scrutinized the same in the mirror.

“You own the place.”  
Oliver was becoming indignant and it was showing in his huffy tone.  
“Yeeesss,” Tommy droned, “but I don’t look after the list. I get drunk sometimes and I have loose lips, so only one person knows real names and that’s John.”

Oliver wrestled his shoulders against the back of his office chair.  
“So I’ll ask him.”  
Tommy laughed boisterously, one akin to the response expected if Oliver said he was going to paint over the Sistine Chapel or something equally as absurd.

“He won’t tell you,” Tommy virtually teased, “he’s an ex-marine with a shit load of secrets. Why do you want to know anyway?”  
Oliver furrowed his brow on whether to tell Tommy or not.  
“I just do.”  
“Then ask her,” Tommy gibed.  
Oliver sighed sourly, “I can’t.”  
You could almost hear Tommy’s eyebrow raise, “did something happen?”  
“No...” Oliver paused, carding his free hand through his hair, “I don’t know.”

Ten minutes later and Tommy knew the abridged version, Megan didn’t want to see Bruce anymore and Oliver simply wanted to check that he hadn’t hurt her – the vagueness in his summary meant that he knew Tommy was itching to ask more, but thankfully his friend left it at only what Oliver had offered, requesting nothing beyond that.

“If there was a way I could just _check_ ,” Oliver lamented, _check it hadn’t been his Freudian slip that had pushed her away._  
“I’m sorry,” Tommy replied candidly, there really was nothing he could, or should, do, “but I’ll be back in Starling on Friday, we should catch up.”

Oliver answered with a non-committal grunt before the two said their goodbyes and Oliver was left reeling in the echoing silence.

Not five minutes passed before Oliver tore the phone from the cradle and dialled John’s number vigorously.

He was prepared to beg, bribe or sweet talk the information from John but when the deep voice answered Oliver already knew none of those things would get him the answer he sought.

“I can’t tell you Oliver,” came before even a simple attempt at pleasantries.  
Tommy had already rung and warned him.  
_Traitorous Tommy!_  
“Please, just give me something,” Oliver begged, _pride be damned._  
“Not going to happen.”

Oliver pursed his lips as his mind went a mile a minute.  
“Do you even know?” he asked, somewhat deviously hoping that maybe the colossus of a man could be plied with a little old fashioned bravado.

John laughed, deep and almost flamboyant, most certainly mockingly.  
“Goodbye Oliver.”  
“You don’t know do you?” Oliver picked, and by the way John cleared his throat afterwards, Oliver began to suspect there might be some truth to that.  
“I know what I need to know,” John replied ambiguously.  
“You don’t,” Oliver continued to goad.  
“Goodbye Oliver,” John flustered.

Oliver may not have gotten any information out of him, but just hearing the great John Diggle a little flustered made him a tad gleeful.

The chuckle that escaped Oliver’s lips must have tormented John because he fired back seconds after, “I know what he put down on the form.”  
_He_.  
Oliver heard it, clear as day.  
“He?” he remarked listening to the mumbled curse John replied with.

“I assume you mean because she didn’t buy the membership herself, because if she is a he then the surgeon did a phenomenal job…”  
“That doesn’t give you anything,” John elusively replied.  
“No, it probably doesn’t,” Oliver replied with a cagey tone as he recounted, quite unexpectedly, something Tommy had said…

 _“Apparently his ex is a member and she vouched for it.”_  
There didn’t need to be a correlation – _but what if there was._

“Thanks John.”  
He briskly hung up and almost ran out his door.

When he saw Felicity still sitting at her desk he smiled warmly.  
“I need a favour,” he asked, still keeping his distance as he swallowed down the guilt he felt about imagining her like he had, “actually two.”  
“If it’s a favour does that mean it’s not work related?”  
“Not exactly,” he offered with a pulled back smile, one that also resembled a cringe, “but there is a bottle of  _Lafite Rothschild 1982_  and a tray of Danish pastries in it for you.”

She looked at him slightly bewildered, he seemed to have perked up in the last thirty minutes.  
“Okay, what’s the favour?”  
“I need you to get a list of the top ten richest men in New York.”  
Felicity expression became pinched and it didn’t go unnoticed.  
“Scavenger hunt,” Oliver offered without entirely thinking it through.  
“I’m sorry?” Felicity asked as she absently wet her lips.

“Tommy set up this scavenger hunt. The idle rich,” he shrugged, “they do stuff like this.”  
“And one of the questions is to find a list of rich guys?”  
She didn’t looked convinced, “well that’s just part of the puzzle,” he added offhandedly.  
“I see. I’ll see what I can find.”  
“Perfect,” he grinned.

“Also,” he started as he fished something from his wallet, “I need you to track down this number.”

He placed a card on Felicity’s desk and slid it closer – not that Felicity needed it any closer, she instantly recognised it, how could she not? It was her card.  
_Well, Megan’s._

And suddenly his earlier request made more sense.  
Alexander Wolfe would be on that list.

* * *

 

Felicity waited until the clock above her head announced with nothing more than the light _click_ of its hands that it was 5pm before she stood and ventured into Oliver’s office, the card – her card – he had given her pinched between the thumb and forefinger of one hand while the thumb of the other absently flicked at the corner.

He looked up from his desk when he heard her tell-tale walk.  
“This number can’t be traced,” she spoke clear and calm as she set the card on his desk and slid it across the glass, closer to him.

“Look,” Oliver sighed, it was fairly apparently he felt bad about involving her in this, but he found himself without any alternatives, “I know you probably have morals that I don’t, and I’m sorry…”  
She held her hand up and obediently Oliver stopped talking.  
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t Mister Queen, I said I _can’t_.”  
She watched as a mix of puzzlement and disappointment filtered into the blue-grey of his eyes – the lustrousness still hadn’t returned to them.  
  
“I don’t expect you to understand the technical terms,” she started as she rolled her thumb idly under the strap of her handbag, “but this number _cannot_ be traced, whoever it belongs to doesn’t want to be found.”  
It wasn’t a lie, Oliver could take that number to any other hacker on her level and they would tell him the same thing.

He looked positively dejected, but he accepted her conclusion on the matter with a hushed but genuine “Thank you Felicity.”

She nodded softly, just the once before the _tap, tap tap-tap_ of her shoes carried her back to the office door. She stopped in the doorway and after tapping her finger against it twice she turned and looked back towards Oliver.

“For what it’s worth,” she said quietly, pulling his attention back from the window and towards her, “people that don’t want to be found aren’t always worth looking for.”  
He nodded like he understood before he abruptly stood and walked restlessly around his desk.

He didn’t know where his feet were taking him, or why, but he found himself tracking a path from his desk to the window, and then down towards the door – _towards her._  
“Let this one go,” Felicity added as Oliver approached, a soft smile on his lips that she couldn’t quite read.

“Did you manage to get the names?” he asked quietly as he approached her on soft footsteps, as though he was afraid he might frighten her away with anything heavier.  
She shook her head, “I’m sorry Mister Queen, I didn’t get a chance.”

Oliver granted her a smile that hid his disappointment well.  
“That’s fine Felicity, have a good evening.”  
She kept one hand anchored to the strap of her bag as the other floated, of its own volition, towards his arm, barely over a foot away, “You too Mister Queen,” she breathed as the tips of her fingers made contact with the creased fabric at the crook of his elbow.  
The touch brought him closer and Felicity didn’t retreat.

“Goodnight,” he whispered, gravel etched in the word.  
Her thumb circled a spot just below his elbow on the inside of his forearm, gathering and releasing the soft suit fabric before it drew a line down towards his wrist.

The space between them was infinitesimal as Oliver tickled the air beside her waist. He could see its form beneath the billowy creamy-pink blouse she wore. He itched to touch it, to feel the soft chiffon fabric beneath his fingers, to see if her eyes would stay focused on him or whether they would drop to where their bodies connected.

His gaze travelled across each of the pearl buttons that held the blouse closed and he imagined skimming his thumb across the hard mounds as he peeled them open. In this light, with her body positioned perfectly under a florescent bulb, he could see the delicate lace of a slip she wore underneath.

He wet his lips with his tongue quite absently as he imagined rolling his tongue over the satin to feel her nipples hardening underneath. His arousal pressed against the seam of his pants as his breathing became shallow and erratic.

He breathed through his nose, deep and purposeful and the scent of her citrus perfume cast him to a tropical location where her berry-pink lips curved around his name.

And then he caught it – just a hint – but definitely not imagined.  
Beneath the crisp notes of oranges lay the heady scent of Felicity’s arousal.  
Oliver’s knees trembled as he fought his desires to drop to his knees, wrap his arms around her thighs and press his face deep between her legs to engulf his senses in that musk.

In that moment he forgot about Megan because all he could think about is kissing Felicity.

Felicity could read his attraction easily, but it wasn’t for her. She backed away, retreating her hand and letting it fall to her side.

She watched him swallow and lament the loss of contact, even if it was just between her fingertips and the fabric of his jacket.

Oliver wanted to reach out his hand and catch her, tell her she had nothing to worry about, that he wouldn’t take advantage of her and that he knows he’s not the type of man that she deserves.

And maybe she’d look at him with wide eyes and parted lips and tell him softly that she wasn’t weary of him at all, she was just afraid of herself – of what she wanted to do.

His whole body relaxed into a sigh at the thought of it.  
But it was all a fantasy and when she put distance between them he too dropped his hand and nailed it to his side.

“Goodnight Mister Queen,” she whispered before she turned and left.  
_Tap, tap, tap-tap._

* * *

  
**[Friday, 6 December 2013]**

  
“Tell me your name is Felicity?” Tommy asked after he rounded the corner and stopped just ahead of Felicity’s desk a little before midday.  
Felicity looked up from her screen and blinked at him slowly, “that depends on who is asking.”  
Tommy slinked deeper into the room, “I’m saddened you don’t recognise my voice,” he crooned with a perfect smile.  
“Maybe I do Mister Merlyn,” Felicity matched his smile with a coy one of her own.  
“Jesus Christ,” he praised as he fell to the floor to the side of her desk and held his hand up towards her, “marry me.”  
“Thomas get off the fucking floor and leave my secretary alone,” Oliver called from deep within his office.

Tommy glanced over his shoulder, shrugged and turned back to Felicity, grovelling on the floor a foot closer, “Have my children. I’ll be a stay at home dad and I’ll support your career and your right to breastfeed in the office, I’ll even massage them to help get the milk…”

“TOMMY!” Oliver yelled a second time, forcing Tommy up off the floor and Felicity to hide her smile behind her hand.  
“Just think about it,” Tommy sighed wishful, before he left with a wink and trundled into Oliver’s office, kicking the door closed behind him.

“Jesus,” he exhaled heavily as he flopped down in one of the chairs, “I’m not a religious man but I would go to church every Sunday for her.”  
“She’s Jewish Tommy,” Oliver remarked, typing the last few words of an email before hitting send and looking away from his screen.  
“Synagogue then,” Tommy argued.  
“She isn’t your type.”  
Oliver’s back stiffened and his tone was unusually gruff.

“Gorgeous, feisty, smart,” he prattled, “how is that not my type? I bet she’s frisky.”  
The grin that blossomed across Tommy’s lips was one Oliver had seen too often and the fact that this morning is related to _his_ Felicity made him all the more weary of it.  
“Tommy,” he huffed indignantly.

His friend tapped a finger to his temple twice and looked at him under arched and knowing brows.  
“I’m serious, it’s always the quiet ones, they’re the freakiest,” Tommy continued, oblivious to the flames burning under Oliver’s cheeks.  
“Stay away from my PA,” Oliver gritted and Tommy finally caught the hint with a soft _ahh_ and an understanding nod.

“You should have just said that in the beginning,” Tommy offered with his hands pressed together and his fingers subtly pointing at Oliver.  
“I did,” Oliver grumped, trying – but failing – to rein in his mopey temperament, “I told you to leave her alone.”

Tommy shook his head softly, the smile still present on his lips and not leaving any time soon, “Not that, the part about you wanting her,” he said perceptively, “we're friends but we don’t share ladies so she's all yours.”  
He sat back in his chair and slid his palms over the edge of the arms.  
_Virile Agitur._

“I don’t,” Oliver scoffed as he played with his jacket, “what, no, that’s not, she’s not, I’m not…” he paused, flustered, “it’s not like that.”  
Tommy grinned more boldly, “How long have we been friends?”  
“Too long,” Oliver teased with a petulant huff.  
  
“Twenty eight years,” Tommy announced, “So I think I can recognise when you have feelings,” he leaned forward in his chair, matching Oliver’s eyes with a stare of his own, “act on it.”

Oliver blew out a chuckle matched with a shake of his head, “Yeah, hi Felicity, I’m your boss but would you like to start a relationship with me? By the way I’m a part owner in a sex club and I have a multitude of kinks I’d like us to engage in, here have a butt plug.”  
Tommy twitched his eyes brow suggestively, “I wouldn’t open with the butt plug maybe a pair of handcuffs or something, but other than that that sounds perfect.”  
“Fuck off Tommy,” Oliver sighed as he slumped in his chair and rolled his eyes.

Tommy leaned forwarded again and straightening the pleats on his trousers he spoke much softer than he had before, “I’m sorry about Megan.”  
It was a name Oliver had been trying to forget and this morning he had tried to convince himself she had been some sort of mirage in the first place. It didn’t work.

It was a strange mix of emotions. He wasn’t _distraught_ – how could he be, she had said in no uncertain terms that their rendezvous were just sex; and he had heartily accepted the same.

While he was undeniably attracted to her physically and on some levels – at least the ones she’d allowed him to see – he was drawn to her mind, her candour and her unapologetic enjoyment of sex; he didn’t love her, how could he? He knew nothing of her outside of Verdant, she could kick puppies for a living for all he knew.

Also, Oliver Queen circa 2013 wasn’t equipped to love. That wasn’t something he said to garner sympathy or because it told of some deep, dark, recessive secret. It was simply a factual statement. He wasn’t even sure he knew how it was _supposed_ to feel.

He blew out another exhaustive sigh, his mind was like a pinball machine and he couldn’t make any sense of it no matter how he tried.  
“I just don’t understand why.”  
“Did something happen?” Tommy asked pensively, he was certain if something untoward had happened John would have heard about it and relayed the same to him.  
“No,” Oliver brushed a hand across his furrowed brow, “we were,” he paused, “being intimate.”  
Tommy laughed, “I love how you get all prude around me.”  
“Anyway,” Oliver gritted, “we were together in one of the fantasy suites.”  
“The pirate one?” Tommy grinned salaciously, “I’ve had so much booty...”  
“No,” Oliver answered decisively, “the office,” he added quietly.  
Tommy sat back and folded his fingers together, “Interesting.”

Oliver glared at him, he knew what his best friend was thinking.  
“Don’t think too much into it,” he warned, “anyway we were intimate, there was a lot of talking foreplay which she seemed into, light bondage, we both finished,” he continued, talking in fractured sentences as he recalled the same, “and then later that night she called it off. She said it was time to move on.”

He blinked back the memory of the hauntingly accurate words she had sent him – how people always imagined they knew who he was by what he showed them on the outside – he was a _Lighthouse_ , a place that served one purpose and that was all people saw. His façade.

Tommy nodded sympathetically, “maybe it’s for the best. Maybe she couldn’t offer you something she thought you needed instead.”

 _Did she think he needed someone else…after all, he’d said her name, given Megan a glimpse into his innermost desires, the ones he’d given a face to._  
_Did Megan cut him loose to float him towards Felicity?_  
_But Felicity was an image, a wholesome, kind, innocent image, she couldn’t be more than that._

He dragged his fingers across his scalp, tugging at his hair in lieu of his thoughts.  
If only he could find someone that was both saint and sinner, both wholesome and deviant, both _Felicity_ and _Megan_.

“You have the Christmas function tonight yes?” Tommy asked as he rose from his seat.  
Oliver glanced back towards the freshly laundered suit he had hanging up behind him, “Yes.”  
Tommy licked his lips absently and cleared his throat purposefully before he leaned in against Oliver’s desk.  
“If Felicity gives you _any_ signal of which I’m almost certain she will, _forget_ about Megan and take it,” he spoke clearly with his eyes focused on Oliver.  
“Why are you so sure?”

Tommy stood straight and shrugged, “Because she wasn’t into me.”  
“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve said in a while,” Oliver mocked as he laughed.  
“If she gives you a signal...” Tommy repeated, “take it!”

 

* * *

 

Emilia Spencer stood out whatever the crowd, it wasn’t her stature given she was a few inches shorter than Felicity and had a beautiful willowy frame. She wasn’t loud and she didn’t demand attention but rather it was handed to her quite willingly by most of the eyes that were in the room she walked into.

Today was no exception.

Felicity watched her walk into the cafe filled with lunchtime patrons. A lull hung over the tables and the barista behind the counter straightened his apron, brushing flecks of dusting chocolate quickly off it.

A table of men in freshly laundered and pressed business suits who had, only seconds before, being discussing the rising stock market and gleefully expecting a fat bonus cheque for their efforts for the year fell deathly silent. One didn’t even bother to clamp his jaw closed.

Felicity breathed a soft chuckle, although she couldn’t blame them. She too had felt the same way once.

She raised her hand and waved her dear friend over to the table she’d had reserved. The business suits got nervously excited as Emilia walked towards them completely oblivious to their existence.

Felicity stood and the two friends embraced both to the disappointment and delight of the table of suits.

“It’s been too long,” Emilia sighed after she brushed her rose tipped lips against Felicity's cheek.  
It had been almost six months since the friends last caught up face to face.  
“Far too long,” Felicity replied, letting the notes of Emilia's lilac scent linger on her senses.

“I still can’t believe you and Wolfe separated,” Emilia spoke, listless and ever so slightly dramatic in her warm English accent.  
“It was time,” Felicity remarked as she flicked through the menu, “for both of us.”  
“And Starling?” Emilia hummed, “it seems so dreary,” she added before she closed her menu, already set on what she wanted.  
  
“It has a few things that take some getting used to,” Felicity remarked as she looked out the window at the inclement weather.  
A whimsical look Felicity knew well floated over her friends stunning face, “I could never stay in one place too long.”  
“Oh I know,” a soft chuckle danced from her lips, “you live out of a suitcase.”

Emilia patted her ruby lips together before they hooked at the corners and rose into a rather mischievous smile.  
“I will never understand the fanciful desire to lay down roots in one place.”  
“Maybe one day someone will train the great Emilia to stop flitting off every few months.”  
She shrugged her slender shoulders under the black chiffon top, “I’d rather that person just came with me.”  
Felicity laughed as she closed her menu and folded her hands on top, “Or that.”

The two friends, once their food had been ordered and their wine had been poured, spent time catching up on everything and nothing in particular, bouncing between the history they shared and the things that had happened in the last few months until their food arrived.

“So, who is he?” Emilia asked as she picked at her bowl of carbonara.  
“Pardon?” Felicity shot back with a hand across her mouth, politely shielding the mouth full of Chicken Caesar.  
“You have a permanent crinkle in your nose,” Emilia effused, her brow arching almost to her hairline, “so there must be a man involved.”  
“There was,” Felicity stabbed a shred of chicken, “but not anymore.”  
  
“As you or as Megan?”  
Felicity stared at the meat on her fork and blew out a telling sigh, her lunch companion could read her gallingly well and she was never afraid of doing just that.  
“As both.”  
Emilia stopped eating and fixated her light eyes on Felicity, silently trying to judge whether Felicity’s answer was a genuine one.  
_It was._  
“You trusted someone with that?” There was no judgmental tone and no gaping surprise either, instead her expressive tone and her smiling eyes showed something more akin to pride.  
Felicity shifted in the seat of her chair, arching her shoulders against the back of it, “Not exactly,” she admitted quietly, “he doesn’t know I’m both.”  
Emilia pushed her plate to the side and cross her forearms on top of the varnished table with a slight lean before she moved to the edge of her seat and smiled, “I’m intrigued.”

The story came out with enough obscurity to keep both the nature and person involved in her little tale a secret in case there were any straining ears nearby, but the petite brunette understood it all completely, much more than anyone else could.

When the story finished with the message Felicity sent and the awkward few days that had followed, Emilia folded her lips together, furrowed her brow and ruminated on situation before her eyes rose back to Felicity’s and she shrugged, “Is he good?”

A short chuckle left Felicity’s mouth, she could have almost predicted that response.  
“Yes, very.”  
“And he responds to your wants?”  
“Always.”  
Felicity couldn’t fault him on that.

Emilia shrugged a second time as though what she was about to say was the simplest answer that Felicity had somehow managed to overlook, “Then tell him.”  
“I can’t,” Felicity fired back almost immediately.  
Her friends lips pursed, “And why not?”  
Felicity leaned across the table enigmatically, “Did you miss the part where he’s my boss?”  
“I didn’t miss it,” she smirked, “I actually found that bit particularly exciting.”

Felicity shook her head slowly, telling Oliver could very well be career suicide.  
“The only people that have known both Megan and Felicity are you and Wolfe,” she followed a crouton around her plate before abandoning the idle pursuit, “Wolfe because he opened my eyes to it and you because we both agreed.”  
“And what do you think he will do?”  
It was a serious question, one Felicity didn’t have an answer for.

“I don’t know.”  
Emilia combed her slender fingers through her silky tresses, brushing them back behind her shoulder, “Well you won’t know unless you try.”

Her fingers moved from her hair to the back of Felicity’s hand as it lay on the table between them.  
“I know you’re a private person Felicity,” she soothed as her fingers stroked a feather-light touch down Felicity’s hand, “but rewards sometimes only come from risks. If this Oliver is what your eyes say he is, then maybe he’ll be worth the risk.”

Felicity turned her hand so their fingers affectionately intertwined.  
“How long are you in Starling for?”  
“This is my only day I’m afraid, it was a bit of a whirlwind visit,” Emilia lamented, her accent hugging the edges of her words, “but I’ll be back in March for longer.”

With their food mostly eaten and their glasses of wine finished the two friends stood and embraced and when Felicity pulled back from the same she saw the glint in her friend’s eye that almost always meant one thing – she wanted to do something preposterous.

Emilia leaned in, brushing her lips against Felicity’s lobe, and whispered, “How about we give the suits something to spice up their dreams tonight?”

Slender fingers pinned back the tiny wisps of hair that had fallen from Felicity’s ponytail moments before she felt familiarly-soft lips brush against her own. Warm air teased the seal of her lips and Emilia grazed her nose against Felicity’s cheek.

Felicity answered by cupping Emilia’s face and sinking her lips deeper into the kiss. Their mouths mashed together, melding strawberry pink with ruby red as their tongue tangled in Felicity’s mouth. She felt hands clasp her hip, pinning their bodies together as fingertips glazed over the round of her ass.

The hum from the nearby table was audible and made both women chuckle with their lips still firmly together until Emilia nipped Felicity’s plump lower lip and they broke apart, smiling and breathless.

A gentler, intimate peck followed before Emilia winked at the awestruck table and the two friends left with stifled giggles and ran straight into a very wide-mouth, grinning Tommy Merlyn.  
“Everything alright Mister Merlyn?” Felicity asked, a deliciously coy smile brushed across her lips which were now a shade darker than they had been when they’d met an hour or so ago.  
Tommy didn’t try to hide his glee as his eyes hopped between the two stunning woman, “Phenomenal,” he answered, almost breathless, most definitely aroused, “Are you two...”  
His words trailed off, but his hitched eyebrow said the rest.

“We’re friends,” Emilia answered, purposely teasing her tongue along the corners of her lips, a move which elicited a growled hum from Tommy, “don’t you open mouth kiss your friends?”  
“Would you like to be my friend?” he answered back with the timing of a comedian but the flare of a suave player.  
Emilia tapped his face before she dragged her nails lightly off the edge of his jaw, “I like him.”

She hailed a taxi and one stopped almost immediately. She opened the door and paused with one foot still anchored to the pavement.  
“Take a risk,” she smiled over at Felicity before she folded herself into the backseat of the cab “and wear red, you look amazing in red”.  
Felicity nodded benevolently, “Call me from Prague.”

The door closed and Tommy, snapped from his illicit daydreams about what he had just witnessed and bounded up to the open window of the cab as it started to pull away.

“Wait I didn’t catch your name,” he chorused as he walked alongside the moving taxi.  
“That’s because I never gave it,” Emilia laughed rousingly before she tapped the shoulder of the driver and he pulled into traffic.

Tommy scoured the street before he found Felicity who had already crossed the road and hailed a cab of her own. He darted through traffic, garnering one heated curse word and two unamused toots before he hung from the door of Felicity’s cab.  
“Your friend, is she married?” he puffed.  
“No,” Felicity answered simply as she reached for the door handle.  
“Is she into men or...”  
Felicity smiled before she tugged the door from his grip.  
“Goodbye Mister Merlyn.”

The door closed and she too drove away leaving him stooped from his short sprint but smiling from ear to ear.  
“Jesus Christ, it’s always the quiet ones,” he commented to himself with a playful hum pinned to the end.

* * *

  
**[That Night]**

  
Felicity nursed the dregs of her drink, stirring the thin black straw through the melting ice and the residual whiskey. It was only her second and she could drink far more than one might assume her willowy frame could handle. Barry from accounts had been talking to her, but his voice had become a distant and monotonous sound that she couldn’t really focus on as her eyes stayed pinned over his shoulder, looking straight past Barry to watch Oliver with his wide shoulders a little hunched over his sixth drink.

Even though she was fairly certain a man of his build could probably take at least three more before his thinking tipped over into _“I won’t remember this in the morning”_ she needed to be sure that when she told him of her proposition, he was fully coherent and accountable enough to appreciate it – and any possible ramifications of the same.

It was not like Felicity to be nervous, at least not anymore. The years she spent beside ( _on top of, underneath, wrapped around…_ ) Alexander Wolfe had taken much of her babbling nature and taught her to control the same. It had been a considerable amount of time since she had ever felt flustered by a situation, let alone by a person, but somehow Oliver had managed to bring that part of her personality screaming to the fore when he near on begged her to find _Megan_.

Until lunchtime today, however, Felicity had decided to ride out the storm. Soon enough Oliver would be over his _funk_ and find another woman to take to bed, hopefully one that quickly learned how hard it made him to have nails raked over his body, deep enough that the red lines they left lasted well after the act.

And then Emilia, in all her fiery wisdom, had stated simply that _some rewards were only gained after a risk._

So, wrapped in red and standing in front of her mirror in her quaint apartment earlier that evening Felicity opened _Megan’s_ drawer, took out her mask and placed it in her black clutch – and there it stayed, silently taunting her with Emilia’s words.

_Take a risk._

“I’m going to get a drink,” she cheerfully interrupted Barry, flashing him an apologetic smile that didn’t allow him enough time to offer to get one for her.  
She slipped past him and walked confidently up to the bar.

_Take a risk._

“Whiskey sour, straight, please,” she asked as she leaned just a wrist against the bar.  
“A whiskey drinker,” Oliver chuffed as he rattled the small remnants of ice in his own tumbler.  
“Indeed Mr Queen.”

She watched his eyes swim slowly up her body, first circling her waist (undoubtedly attracted to the fabric that clinched in around there, a place where _Bruce_ had once bit her quite delectably during one of their encounters) then roving up to her breasts which were tightly sheathed behind the silky fabric. She noted his tongue as it inadvertently peeked from behind his lips before his teeth greedily pulled it back into his mouth – it seemed drink number six removed any subtly Oliver had.

His eyes honed in on her lips and for a moment she felt the fierceness of his stare, as though his eyes were a dragnet and despite her solid footing, he was reeling her in.

And then she saw it, a flicker of recognition across his face. She wouldn’t call it shock, rather the smile he didn’t try to extinguish from his lips painted more of a ‘ _I just won the lottery_ ’ type expression.

“Miss Smoak?” he spluttered her name as he tried to suck back the remains of his drink to abate his appealing surprise.  
“Yes Mister Queen,” she remarked as the bartender presented her drink.

* * *

  
It was a while later when Felicity stepped through his room door and cast an eye around the opulent French-chic penthouse he seemed to call home.

Moments after, fearful she would lose her resolve, she offered Oliver a choice.

His pretty EA he could have slow, languid sex with, fulfilling the fantasy she knew he had about her as she panted moans into his ear letting him know how much she wanted this while he buried himself inside her and told her when to climax _OR_ he could have Megan  
“… _the one that will fuck you.”_

It didn’t take Oliver long to choose and when she put forth her proposal to assimilate the two different worlds on Friday nights, he readily accepted that too.

And then she offered him one more choice for the night as she reached around her body to the zip at the small of her back, “How would you like me?” she breathed, her voice like an intoxicating siren to his ears.

She eased the zip downward and brushed the thin straps of her blood red dress from her shoulders until it fell like liquid into a shimmering pool on the floor.

Oliver’s breathing deepened and the pace of it became somewhat erratic. When his eyes had traversed her body as she stood beside the bar downstairs, he had not imagined that she wasn’t wearing a single bit of clothing underneath her dress.

And yet, there she was, like a statue cut from serene white marble, standing in front of him _completely_ nude.

He contemplated, like he had only a few days earlier, of dropping to his knees and burying his face between her legs, breathing in deeply the scent of her heady musk. He patted his lips together as he wondered if she was already wet for him; if he gently peeled back her folds would he see her slick, pink skin glistening with arousal and would her little nub already be swollen and tingling, ready for him to tease it with his tongue.

It was a strange juxtaposition he found himself in as he remembered the milky curves of her skin and the small dusting of freckles across her chest. He knew the soft sweep of her belly and the cut of her hips. He’d kissed the neatly groomed thatch of her mound and sliced his tongue between her heat, but now as she stood ethereal and naked in front of him, as both Felicity and Megan, it also felt wondrously new.

He stepped forward and took one of her wrists into both his hands, swamping her delicate and slender hand. He grazed a single fingertip down the centre of her forearm from the elbow to the wrist before he circled the latter.

“Would you let me bind you?” he asked, his tone tipped with uncertainty.  
Her ruby lips folded softly over each other as she considered his request.  
“They would need to be soft,” she answered while she traced the line his finger made across her wrist, “I can’t return to the party with red lines on my wrists. People might start to ask questions.”

He dragged the back of his fingers slowly up the curve of her ribcage and over the peak of her breast before his hand settled around her neck and his thumb strummed lightly over her pulse point.  
“And we don’t like questions,” he agreed with a husky undertone that sat somewhere between _Bruce_ and _Oliver_ , the fact of which felt utterly freeing.

He could be both and she wouldn’t shy away.

He thought about kissing her in that moment, finally feeling those full, luscious lips that he had craved to taste for a lifetime, or so it seemed, but she hadn’t offered those to him yet and for now he wouldn’t ask.

The palm of his hand slid down to the cusp of her shoulder igniting a brush fire of bumps across her naked body. He gripped her shoulder as though he thought she might leave, but as she stepped closer and her heels made the most plainly erotic single tap on the marbled floor, Oliver knew she wasn’t going anywhere that he didn’t lead.

Back down her arm he dragged his hand, watching the way her soft skin tugged and tightened underneath his grip. When an eager hum escaped from her parted lips and warmed the air between them Oliver dropped his grasp to her wrist and, after encasing her fist with his large fingers, he walked her through the echoing foyer, past the modern kitchen and the open plan living where the back wall and the wrap around corners of the luxury suite was made of tinted windows that gave a panoramic view of Starling.

Her heels hit the expensive carpet and Felicity paused long enough for Oliver to feel the resistance and twist his head towards her. She looked down at her shoes and asked him a question with nothing more than a slight furrow of her brow.

“Leave them on, please,” Oliver answered, wetting his lips as he glanced down at the black gladiator heels.

The upper level had a balcony that looked out over the first floor. It was to the left of this landing where Oliver opened white double doors into another French-styled room that, while extravagantly designed and unmistakably dressed in the most expensive pieces money could buy, said so very little about Oliver.

Mirrors framed either side of the wall that the bed sat against and chrome edging around the back-mirrored bedside tables reflected the light from the crystal chandelier in the centre of the room. Large windows like the ones downstairs gave the same view of the City scape and opened out onto a private deck. A deep grey chaise lounger in the corner of the room, which would have allowed the occupant the most amazing of views, was the only thing there that seemed to fit Oliver and his penchant for gazing out windows.

“It doesn’t look much like your tastes,” Felicity speculated as she sat down on the soft grey linen bench seat at the foot of the bed.  
“It’s not,” Oliver admitted without much consideration, it was far too “designed” for his liking, but having a place like this afforded him a sort of separation between himself and any of the women he happened to bring home – they never got a sense of _who_ he was and he was perfectly okay with that.

He walked into the closet and crouched down in front of a long white drawer at the bottom of the first set before he returned moments later with four silk scarves Felicity didn’t need to touch to know they were exquisitely soft.

“Why do you live in a hotel?” she queried as she plucked a few pins from her hair and let it tumble loose down her naked back and spill over her slender shoulders.  
“Why not?” Oliver answered with a soft chuckle as he walked around the bed and from under the mattress at each corner he fished out silver loops which were attached with leather straps to the divan base.

Felicity watched as he went about orderly placing a scarf at each corner, the two pink ones at the top and the two blue ones at the feet.

When he was finished she crawled onto the bed, relishing the way the expensive linen cushioned and billowed around her. She nestled her shoulders into the mattress and laid her head onto the nest of satin pillows.

He cupped her cheek and rolled her head to the side of the bed where he stood.  
“Are you sure you want to do this, that I’m not…” he breathed reluctantly, “…that I’m not taking advantage of you.”  
A soft chuckle danced from between her lips, “I’m the one that came to you remember?”  
Despite her answer she could still see the reservation in his eyes.  
“Oliver, you’re not taking advantage of me,” her words drew a smile from his lips as she took one of the silk ties near her head and placed it by his hand, “we’re both cognitive adults getting what they want.”

Oliver smiled as a small hitch caught in his throat, and not just because she looked positively breath-taking, but for another reason entirely.

He stood from his crouched position and raised one of her arms above her head and towards the corner of the bed. He let it rest as far as she could comfortably stretch, his fingers tracing the taut muscles of her arms.

He wrapped the silk scarf four times around her small wrist, making sure that the fabric stayed flat so it wouldn’t mark her skin if she pulled against them. He secured it off with a knot on the inside centre and fed the tail of the scarf through the silver hoop, although not tying it off just yet.

He repeated the same identical actions on the second arm and when he was satisfied that the binds were even he tied one off, pulling it tight until Felicity hissed out a groan telling him the stretch down her arm was perfect.

“You called me Oliver,” he finally divulged as he tightened the second restraint and heard a mirrored hiss escape her lips.

She smiled, her hair spilling across his grey linen like gold, “I suppose your premonition came true.”

Oliver toed off his shoes and removed all but his black briefs, laying each item gently on top of the other on the ottoman (covered in the same grey linen fabric as the bench seat) at the centre of the walk in robe. He selected a thin, ribbed condom from the drawer beside the bed and placed it not far from her hip.

“If you need lube or anything else…” he simpered as though he was merely offering a guest a cup of coffee.  
“Megan hasn’t needed it with you so I can’t imagine why I would?” Felicity hummed, aware of just how wet her folds were at the prospect of being teased and filled with him.

Oliver smiled as his head bobbed out an understanding nod while he crawled onto the bed and gently parted her legs with his knee until the arch of her eyebrow told him that was as far as she could manage.

His eyes drunk in the sight of her naked and pink sex lightly glistening with her juices and he couldn’t contain himself a moment longer as he stooped to press a kiss there. She was warm and delicately salty and Oliver found it took all the strength he could muster to pull away.

With her heels still on and after the few moments he took to admire the delicately thin skin of her feet – with his tongue – Oliver tied her ankles up in much the same way as he had done for her wrists, all while watching her intently in case he saw some resistance in her eyes.

“Safe word?” he asked after he finished tying off her second ankle.  
She hummed as he tickled his fingers up the inside of her leg making it jolt against the restraints.  
“Memo,” she breathed as her eyes focused down toward Oliver who had once again decided to snake his tongue between her nether lips.

She felt the warm air chuckle from his lips as he kissed over the top of her mound and towards her navel.  
“That’s very telling Miss Smoak,” he growled, watching her face between her breasts as the tiny peaks of her nipples hardened.  
“I hardly think you’re in a position to judge Mister Queen,” she quipped, raising her hips barely an inch off the mattress to press her sex into his rough jaw as he worked his lips back down her body.

Oliver knew what she meant and for a moment he thought about apologising for the way he’d used her in his fantasy with Megan, but when he blinked up her shapely form and caught the mischievous glint in her eyes, he knew she wanted nothing of the sort.

He slipped from the bed and Felicity strained her neck to see him bend down to the same drawer the scarves had come from and return to the bed with a pristine white ostrich feather.

“The first night I saw you, _Megan_ ,” he spoke her name now like it belonged to a ghost, “you were teasing yourself with a feather,” as he recounted he lightly stroked the tip of the feather from her ankle, up the inside of her calf muscle and in tiny circles at the back of her knee.

“I remember,” she breathed, her tone slightly thin as her entire leg exploded with tingling prickles, both where the feather had brushed and in places that anticipated the same.  
“You were fucking beautiful,” he cursed in a growl and swept the feather up her thigh, “I wanted to be that feather, to brush myself against your smooth skin and watch your breathing become soft and shallow.”

Felicity hummed as she listened to the needy way in which he spoke before he brushed the feather between her sex, coating the tip with her juices.

Her back arched at the torturously slow sensation as her body convulsed against the restraints and her fingers whitened around the strap. The vulnerability of allowing herself to be completely at his dominance felt amazing while her body skirted around the nirvana state of tormenting pleasure as he swept the feather between her folds.

When he pulled the plume up Felicity could see the wet ends sticking together and turning the same a soft grey colour before Oliver brought it to his nose and inhaled.

The scent of her arousal drifted down his entire body as he breathed her in deeply. The subtle notes of her perfume hugged the delicate hints of salt and musk and combined to make a heady aroma he could almost taste.

Watching her face as it leaked reflections of her pleasure, both in the way her lips parted and pressed together with each breath and the way her azure blue eyes seemed to darken with a tempest storm, Oliver teased her nipples with the wet ends of the quill.

“Did you ever think of me Miss Smoak,” he asked as he paused the feather at the tip of her pebbled nipple, “did you ever think of me the way I thought of you these last four weeks?”  
She smiled wickedly, “I thought about a great many things,” she replied as she teased her tongue across her lower lip.

He caught her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and squeezed making Felicity buck against the binds and bury the back of her head into a pillow as she cried out in carnality.  
“Colour?” he asked as he watched her take short, sharp breaths.  
“Green,” she answered with her voice slightly rough as she tried to level out her breathing.

He continued brushing the feather in circles around her breast, rounding the underside in a swift flick and slowing along the crest.  
“Where does your dress cut?” he asked as he kissed up the centre of her body.  
“There,” she replied when his lips met with a spot about two inches below her sternum.

Oliver smiled as he floated the plume down the side of her ribcage.  
“Tell me what you thought about Miss Smoak while you sat on your chair every Wednesday morning when your body was still tender from what we did the night before.”

She sealed her words behind smiling lips.  
“Or what?”  
“Miss Smoak you’ll have to be punished.”  
A wicked grin awakened across his lips and his eyes seemed to ignite with devilish candour.  
Felicity hummed delectably, “Please do.”  
He cupped her breast, enjoying the way it moulded in his grasp before his teeth sunk into the fleshy underside. She winched underneath him and cried out ardently as Oliver drew her deeper into his mouth.

He could feel the resistance of her skin but he didn’t ease back as he watched the breath still in her throat and the ribbons of her neck become tense.

He teased the other nipple delicately, flicking his thumb over it and rubbing the tiny pearl in quick, soft circles, an opposite feeling to the other. He watched her intently for any signs she might want him to stop, but if the last few weeks had taught him anything, it was that there was much more to Felicity Smoak than one might first assume.

So, even though she struggled against the binds with a glisten of sweat across her brow, she didn’t utter the word that would end it. Rather, Felicity was thoroughly enjoying the tightrope between unadulterated pleasure and wildly carnal pain.

After what felt like a lifetime of moulding and bending her flesh in the warmth of his mouth and by the force of his teeth, Oliver pulled away and studied the scarlet blemish he had left on her snowy complexion.

He smoothed it over carefully with his thumb and Felicity whimpered at the light touch. She would certainly wear that crimson mark for a few days, if not more and the idea that she would still have it on Monday made Oliver lick his lips and groan while his erection grew.  
“Underneath your desk,” she admitted, her words panted as she tried to still her fitful breathing.  
“What underneath my desk?” Oliver pried as he brushed his sheathed cock against her sex, catching her swollen clit and making her mewl keenly.  
“I’m sucking you off, you’re fucking my mouth, either or,” she laughed, virtually breathless as her eyes wandered to the ceiling.

Oliver continued to tease the feather up and down the lines of her body before focusing at the crease of her thighs.  
“Are you naked Miss Smoak?”  
Felicity gnawed at the edge of her lip, as her body intermittently jolted at the tease of the feather that had become like a match against her delicate skin.  
“No,” she rasped, watching Oliver’s face as he momentarily pouted, “but I don’t have any panties on and you’re,” she paused, letting a peak of arousal wash over her as Oliver once against brushed his shaft against her sex, “…you’re teasing me with the smooth leather on the top of your shoe.”

Oliver grinned lewdly at the prospect of pressing his tanned-leather dress shoes deep between her legs as her groans reverberated down his shaft.  
“Are you wet?” he asked as he bent down and flicked his tongue over her coiled nipple.  
“Yes-very,” the answer tumbled from her mouth as Oliver blew across her damp peak.

He watched as her chest expanded and the scent of fresh arousal tipped the air, not just hers alone as his briefs were no doubt damp to the touch.

“What about the laces on my shoe?” he asked as one side of his lips tipped his smile unevenly.  
She hummed provocatively as she imagined the friction of the laces hard against her febrile inner lips, each one chafing her as he danced his foot, making her entire body ache with compulsion.  
“Do you finish that way?” his voice deepened until it became tremulous and gravelly.  
“No,” she answered with a smoky tone and a coy wink, “you don’t allow it.”  
“Fuck,” Oliver cursed darkly as his own need became achingly desperate, “but you’re right, I wouldn’t let you finish like that,” he added, breathless behind gritted teeth.  
She blinked playfully, rapturing his eyes in the deep pools of her own, “Why?”

His fingers grazed through her slick juices and around her numb, now so sensitive to even the lightest of touches that she cried out ravenously. He eased her aching only momentarily when he dipped a finger inside her entrance before he fed the same through his mouth, licking the entire length of each of his thick fingers.  
“It would be a waste,” he smiled as he finished off his meal of her.

Felicity grappled with her breath as it became tight and shallow. She could feel the dankness of sweat veiling her body and the heat that flowed down her chest like a curtain of red. Every nerve in her body was tremoring with the heights of her arousal as she whimpered through her yearning to be filled.

“Colour?” Oliver asked, watching the heave of her chest with each breath.  
“Orange,” she pleaded, fighting the binds in an effort to feel something other than the intense longing at her core.  
“What do you need?”  
Her drunk eyes traversed his thick length greedily, “You.”

Oliver freed his cock from his briefs like a springboard before they landed on a heap beside the bed. Felicity groaned expectantly as she ground her hips into the mattress, trying blindly to seek him out.

After tearing the condom from its foil and sheathing his member behind the wall of latex, Oliver positioned himself at her entrance, applying only enough pressure to let her know he was there, but not enough to pass through. He shadowed her body and licked the flat of his tongue firmly across one nipple then the other.

Felicity moaned in short sobs as her body pined to move, to touch, to feel.  
Holding his cock firmly in his grip he sliced it between her slit making her scream.  
“How?” he inquired as he once again nestled his tip at her door, giving himself three short tugs as though he was knocking.  
“Surprise me,” she answered, her voice ragged and thin as she blew back strands of hair that had fallen across her face.

Oliver plunged himself inside her suddenly, his hard, thick shaft penetrating her so completely that the air flew out from her lungs and travelled with sharp scream that Oliver desperately wanted to feel against his lips.

He drove himself all the way to the hilt without let up and only then did the breath return to Felicity. His cock swelled inside her as she gently circled her hips, feeling every inch of him with absolute clarity.

Oliver dropped his lips to her neck, moaning his lusty pleas into the edge of her jaw – the closest he would find himself to her lips. Her walls were tight and delectably strangled his length. He could feel himself pulsing inside her as she rounded her hips and settled her body into his rigid length.

He only stilled for a moment though before he anchored his weight onto one forearm and slowly withdrew. He could see her eyes perfectly from this vantage point and he took every delightful little spark they gave him.

No sooner had he almost completely withdrawn, he hammered back down, impaling her and once again stealing the breath from her lungs. She cried out his name and it spurred him on until he had built up such a rhythm that he could hear the sounds of the leather straps lashing against the bed base with every thrust.

Felicity fought the restraints, aware that the more she did the tighter they seemed to become. It was encompassing, and indiscernibly erotic, to feel so much pleasure yet control so little. He saw her struggle and went to untie her wrist before she urged him not to.

“Please leave them,” she begged, her quiet plea seemingly disembodied from the frantic thrusting the two of them were embroiled in.

Oliver watched her eyes intently, realising in that moment where her panted breath and rasped voice were so wonderfully _Megan_ and her hair and eyes were so beautifully _Felicity_ that the objects of his desires had collided.

And even though he had known it since she pulled the mask from her clutch, that truth now finally sunk in – not only was he hilt deep in the luscious warmth of his secretary _now_ , he had been every Tuesday night for the past four weeks.

The realisation of it sent jolts of pleasure down the sinewy muscles of his thighs, instantly tightening them. He would feel each time she clenched her body around his shaft and he could feel her moans as they shuddered down her body and he could smell her in the hot, piquant air.

And when his lips curved around her nipple and she breathlessly urged him to bite her supple flesh he could also taste the fresh salty dew of her sweat.

“Harder,” she pleaded through rasped and thin breaths.  
Oliver complied and his full and rigid cock pumped quickly inside her, sliding, frictionless, through her entrance and skimming her cushioned walls. His pace was fast and the sweat pooled at his temples as he bucked into her; hot, wet skin slapping against hot, wet skin.

He witnessed a delirious expression coat her face and with her head tipped back and her neck tense and strained, Felicity came in a gush of warm release that Oliver could feel radiating through the condom.

He stilled himself, half in, half out, relishing the way her walls were massaging his head as he stood on the precipice of his own release while her desperate mewls dragged him closer.

He ran a hand through her folds, slicking his fingers in her juices before he glossed them over her puckered hole.

“Miss Smoak?” he whispered, his cock thrumming at the teetering  _half-in, half-out._  
Her eyes are barely able to focus but she blinked down her body at him as she rocked against his stilled, hard rod.  
“May I?” he asked as he rimmed and dipped just the tip of his lubricated finger into her tightly anal hole.  
“Yes Mister Queen,” she rasped and the instant her consent had been issued, Oliver pressed his two digits, wet with her spend, into her budded hole, groaning licentiously at the sensation.

 _Fuck, she was tight._  
_Gripping both his cock and his fingers._

He glided them up and down her thin wall at the same time as he began his rhythmic thrusts once again. He built the pace back up swiftly as his forearm shook under his weight.

The base of his cock skimmed over her nub as he brought himself up with each thrust, making her react with keened cries as though each stroke scorched like a fire between her legs.

His fingers moved in only small thrusts up her rear and in sequence with the pace set by his cock as he rode her hard and fast. His fingers pressed into her back passage while his head passed over the other side of it, stroking his own shaft from within.

Felicity was almost completely filled by him and for a moment she considered begging for his tongue to swarm her mouth too, so that every part of her was swallowing some part of him. But she held the request behind a sealed smile and ferocious bite marks that marred her swollen lower lip.

 _Another time perhaps_.

She could see his orgasm barrelling closer on his face as his eyes fogged over to a cloudy blue like the colour they turned before a storm. His lower lip twitched while his tongue berated it with sharp licks and the large rounds of his shoulders flexed under his tight and glossy skin.

His thrusts became erratic and his breathing, while deep, was uneven and unsteady. Her nails dug into her palms, imaging them to be the slopes of his taut ass.

She could see how tightly he held back his words, to the point where he looked almost pained by them.  
“Tell me Oliver,” she soothed, though her voice was thin and panted, “tell me how you like this.”  
His eyes, almost crazed over with carnality, sprung up to hers.

She lifted her body just enough to push her soft mounds against the hard planes of his chest.  
“Tell me,” she ordered.  
“You’re fucking perfect,” he gritted, his entire body galloping towards his release.  
Her body lurched with his force and her lungs emptied in a heated cry.  
“Let me take you over the edge,” she said, her words pulsing amidst heavy breaths, “drop your shoulder.”

Oliver did just as he was asked as Felicity pulled against the wrist restraints, gaining enough movement to shift down an inch and allow her mouth to touch the slope where his neck met his shoulder and her tongue to lave across it.

She licked it slowly as her body continued to be taken at both entrances.  
“Deeper,” she breathed near his ear and he complied, slamming himself so deep her hips bucked back against him.  
Seconds later she bit down, hard, on the place where her tongue had danced gently only moments before.

Oliver cursed, prolifically, at the same instant as his muscles clenched down the back of his thighs and his balls swelled and throbbed before he shot ribbons of release into the tip of the condom.

Felicity came for a second time in a heated cry soon after as her walls crumbled around him.

He continued to roll in and out of her as her tongue lapped over the deep indentations her teeth had left in his skin.

He slipped his fingers out from her rear and gently tracked some of her second spend down towards it with his thumb. She sighed as he massaged the warm, silky release into her stretched hole easing any residual discomfort.

His eyes wandered down her body as he sat back on his heels.  
“Not a drop wasted,” he winked before he bent down to kiss up the remnants of her succulent juices.  
He rose back up with his lips slightly glossed in her, and touched his hand quite gently to her cheek.  
“I’m sure this arrangement will be pleasurable for both of us Miss Smoak,” he whispered as he eclipsed her body with his.  
His lips were so close that Felicity was certain she could merely pout and she would be able to taste herself on him.  
“Undoubtedly Mister Queen,” she whispered back as a coy smile turned up the corners of her lips.  
_Undoubtedly_.

 

**Oliver's Hotel Penthouse Suite**

Just because I can

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little A/N  
> Think of this, for now, like a friends with benefits, only they're colleagues and the benefits are quite kinky.
> 
> You will see very little amorous exchanges when they get it on and I have written it that way on purpose, and bloody hell it was hard guys (no lusting stares or whispered I love yous as per my normal modus operandi), but it was absolutely on purpose ;)
> 
> Also Emilia, once again I state categorically NOT A LOVE TRIANGLE ;) (but I ship it, let me know if you did too)


	7. The Unmistakable Mr Wolfe

“Why did you tell me?” Oliver asked as he sat at the edge of the bed and gently untied her second wrist, the other and both her ankles already loosed.  
“I felt you should know,” she answered softly before her wrist came free and she gradually squeezed her hand into a fist, letting the feeling return to her slightly numbed fingertips.  
There was something about that feeling that Felicity always found particularly enjoyable and it made her sigh warmly.

Oliver brought her wrist closer to his face to inspect it. There was only the faintest of red marks which he proceeded to smooth over with the ball of his thumb, “How long have you known?”

Felicity sat up with her wrist still lying in Oliver’s large palm. She pressed her cheek to the taut muscles of his back, dropping an indulgent kiss there, “From the moment I turned and saw you in my room,” she answered, ghosting the words over his skin, which was still slightly misted in his salty sweat.

Oliver chuckled and she heard the air suck into his lungs before he decorated her wrist in three delicate kisses.  
“That long?”  
Her hand slipped from the pedestal of his hand as Oliver shifted to meet her gaze. She sat with her legs tucked up towards her back and one arm bracing against the mattress while the other fell languid across her stomach.

She smiled as she slowly raised the lax hand and trickled her index finger across his mole, “It gives you away.”  
He chuckled for a second time before his brow pinched inward at the gravity of the fact that his mistress and his secretary were one and the same person and that he had…  
“Tuesday,” he sighed bitterly, the night he’d told Megan of his fantasies about Felicity now seemed so much more deviant, “I’m sorry...I…”  
_How did one apologise for that?_

“It’s okay,” she smiled, quieting his troubled brow, “truth be told, it made me realise that maybe this could be mutually beneficial.”  
His fingers traced the crest of her breast, “Like friends with benefits?”  
“Co-workers with kinks seems more apt don’t you think Oliver?” she effused as her fingers slalomed slowly down his chest, mapping out each slope and valley until she reached the deep v-cut of his pelvis where her feathery fingers turned to claws and she raked them down to his thigh.  
Oliver sucked air in through clenched teeth but smiling lips.  
“You keep calling me Oliver?” he finally breathed once her fingertips softened and soothed over the indentations she had left on his thigh only seconds before.  
“Would you like me to stop?” she asked, a certain pinch of innocence in her words that made Oliver growl from the deepest parts of his chest.  
He pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and watched the silent gasp drop from her mouth, “Absolutely not,” he chastised with a smile.

She shifted away from him, sliding her feet off the other side of the bed before Oliver caught her arm.  
“Where are you going?” he asked, his body now stretched across the large bed, his nose close enough to the linen to perhaps, if he breathed deep enough, still smell her there.  
“Back downstairs,” she remarked coyly, “after I use your bathroom if that’s okay?”  
Oliver didn’t want to release his grip on her arm but when she moved to stand up he also knew it wasn’t part of the arrangement to keep her there.

“Of course,” he nodded towards his onsuite across the room, “can I get you anything?”  
He watched as her shapely formed walked lithely across the breadth of the room.  
“Like aftercare?” she smiled as she stopped and leaned against the door surround, the white glossed paint blending in with her snowy complexion.  
Oliver rose off the bed and padded towards her, his semi-erect cock swaying like a pendulum between his muscular thighs, “I did just tie you to a bed,” he whispered as he lightly grazed his fingers across her wrist.  
“This isn’t new for me Oliver,” she admitted as his other hand came to rest on the slope of her waist.  
“How long has this been a part of you?” Oliver asked, “How long have you been Megan?”  
He watched her ruminate over his question and when the silence lingered for what felt like two lifetimes stitched together Oliver opened his mouth to apologise for asking a question he had no right to know the answer to.

But before he could, Felicity answered, “I’ve always preferred sex that was a little _explorative_ , but I finally _understood_ it about three years ago.”  
She watched questions twitch at the seam of his mouth.  
“But we really should be getting back to the party, your absence won’t go unnoticed for long,” she added as she stepped back from his touch.  
“In that red dress you’re wearing tonight Miss Smoak,” he grinned, “I assure you neither will yours.”

 

* * *

 

**[Late February 2014]**

**[AN: We have now come full circle and this is after Chapter 1, phew]**

  
They had carried on this _mutually beneficial arrangement_ for nearly three months without even a suspicious glance or a water-cooler wondering. Tonight however was a first for them.

QC was hosting a soiree for a long-standing head of department, who was retiring from the firm, at the Queen Estate, a 40 minute drive from Felicity’s apartment – _without traffic_. While shuttle buses were organised to take the attendees from QC Tower to the Estate, Oliver had insisted, after he made her leave work at lunchtime to ready herself, that he would pick Felicity up and they would drive together.

Felicity added a swipe of gloss over her matt red lips and carefully patted them together as she waited a stone’s throw from the front door of her apartment for that ride.

Going with Oliver was sure to set a few tongues wagging and she really should have shot down the idea, but knowing that they wouldn’t be partaking in their _usual_ Friday night had made her somewhat soft to his request.

The rapt on the front door found her straighten and brush her palms down the body hugging black lace dress before she straightened the unlined cap sleeves and gave herself one last passing glance. Showing up together would already be taken notice of, but this dress with its demure overture should see to it that no one mistook her for the usual woman Oliver Queen toted into a party.

_I got distracted, so here is her outfit._

__

Her vivid red shoes clipped across the varnish floor before she opened the door to Oliver with one hand in the pocket of his tailored midnight-hued tux. He skimmed his other hand absently down the slightly sheened lapel of his jacket and smiled.

“Cocktail events hosted by my mother agree with you Miss Smoak,” he spoke as his tongue flirted with his lips.  
“It’s a little different to my usual Friday night attire of late, but,” she pouted her lips coyly, “an outfit of that nature is sure to raise a few eyebrows.”  
He offered the crook of his elbow and she took it, “Among other things,” he grinned salaciously.  
After closing the door behind her, Felicity and Oliver walked down the terrace steps and toward their waiting ride.

“Oliver,” Felicity hummed as he guided her towards a limousine.  
He smiled impishly.  
“You hired a limousine?”  
“Well, I don’t _own_ one,” he said bemused as he reached for the door, pausing for a moment to breath in the soft fragrance that danced from the pulse point on her neck, “that would be _absurd_.”  
His lips brushed her neck and despite it been against Felicity’s very adamant rules against public displays of affection _sans masks_ , they were well hidden in the evening’s falling shadows and the kiss was so fleeting that she doubted even Mrs Kipner, the nosey older woman in the apartment below hers, would have seen it.

“And how do you think people might talk, with you bringing your secretary to your parents’ house in something usually reserved for prom dates and weddings?” she challenged with a half-tipped smirk and a gently arched brow while Oliver opened the car door and she, despite her challenge, slipped inside.  
“I should imagine they’ll think I have more money than sense,” Oliver said, his tone one of amusement at the accuracy of his premonition as he settled into the seat beside her.

Felicity’s dress raised up her thighs a few inches as she nestled into the warm leather seat and the driver pulled away from the curb and into the flow of traffic.

Even though they were alone and the driver had no hope of hearing their conversation, Oliver leaned in towards Felicity and lightly kissed the seam of her ear as his finger stroked the inside of her leg.  
“You look beautiful Felicity,” he whispered as his other hand grazed the bare teardrop of skin at the top of her spine, relishing the way her hair brushed against his knuckles.

His eyes followed the silhouette of her body, “Say the word and I’ll take you somewhere else and give you _whatever_ you want,” his voice was smoky and rasped and his warm breath grazed her jaw.

“You mother is expecting you Oliver,” Felicity grinned, even though her body too was aching for their customary Friday night.  
“I play the absent-minded spoiled rich kid _quite_ well, she’ll be sure to forgive me.”  
“And what about me?”  
“I’ll write you a note.”  
Felicity laughed at the smirk that had taken his lips and decorated his eyes.  
“And what will that note say Mister Queen?”  
Oliver walked her dress further up her legs, his fingers tickling the inside of her thigh.

“To whom it may concern,” he started as he slowly lowered himself to his knees, “Miss Smoak was unable to attend the night’s festivities,” he leaned in and, keeping her eyes locked onto hers, he pressed a languid kiss to her supple skin just above the crease of her knee, “I’m afraid she will be _tied up_ ,” his hands gripped both her ankles tightly, swallowing the tops of her red lattice shoes, and sharply broke them apart, opening her legs as wide as he knew she could take.

Felicity gasped, and the sound of it ricocheted off the luxuriant interior and watered the smirk on Oliver’s face.

He nestled his shoulders between her knees, bridging them, before his hands moved around to her rear and pulled her to the edge of the seat. Her dress was almost up around her waist as she held onto the last inch of it, the only thing that kept her somewhat covered from Oliver’s lusty gaze.

She nodded towards the thick black privacy screen that was raised up between them and the driver, “we’re not alone,” she reminded him quietly.  
“You don’t have to worry about that,” he placed his hand over her two that clasped at her hem, “trust me.”

She breathed through her decision before she slowly smiled and raised her hands off her dress, _she trusted him._

Oliver pushed the dress the rest of the way in one movement until it was fully seated around her waist. His fingertips brushed down the front of her black satin panties as he unabashedly groaned at the sleekness of them.

She lifted herself off the seat enough for Oliver to pass the panties under her and as he crawled his way backwards, he dragged the fine fabric down her silky legs. Gently he plucked them from one foot and then the other before he brought them close to his face and took a slow breath in though his nose, with his eyes affixed to hers.

“They smell like you,” he honeyed before he folded them carefully and slipped them into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Slowly he kissed a trail up the inside of her thigh, dipping his tongue between his lips to stroke the crease at her apex. His nose skimmed over her nether lips and the growl that he produced reverberated through her swelling sex.

His lips hopped over her mound, letting only his unshaven jaw brush like deliciously fine sandpaper blowing against her. She relished the sensation of it as her fingers coupled over the edge of the seat, puckering the opulent leather.

He kissed along her waist, enjoying the way her body swayed reflexively with his touch before he drew a line with his tongue to her other thigh.

He could smell her heady arousal but he continued to feather delicate kisses across her thigh, listening to the sound of her keening pleas to touch her, _please just touch her,_ until he couldn’t resist it anymore.

Felicity moaned happily as his tongue sliced up her slit and grazed the tip of her hooded nub. With only the very tip of his tongue, Oliver began tracing circles around the base of the little pearl. His movements were slow and steady, moving in time with a song that song that way playing in his head to keep the pace.

The delicate motion had Felicity in a trance and when his eyes walked up the line of her body he saw her arousal indelibly written across her face. Her lips were parted and wet from her tongue. Her lids hung like heavy drapes over her brilliant blue eyes as her raven lashes splayed over her snowy skin which was dusted in a veil of lusty sweat.

 _Fuck, sex looked good on her._  
  
As her quietened moans began to be hinged in desperation Oliver deepened the strides of his tongue before he gently flicked the hood of her clit, teasing it. Wordlessly she keened, pressing herself into him and moving in time with the rhythm he’d begun as he alternated between the slow circles and the light flicks.

Her fingers raked through his hair encouragingly before he stroked two fingers through her slick heat, coating them in her warm spread. Watching her closely, knowing what he was about to do, Oliver sunk the same two fingers into her entrance and began stimulating her walls with even strokes. Her eyes flung open and a certain kind of wildness floated around the irises as her fingertips coiled at the root of his hair.

He hissed against her sex, pulsing hot air down between her folds that saw her buck against his face and in that same instant his tongue changed course, moving from slow circles to light sideways strokes across her clit. His tempo stayed even, back and forth like a boat rocking on an almost still lake, each stroke building on the other until Oliver could feel her walls clenching around his fingers.

He twisted them inside her, pressing deep into her cushioned walls to feel them pulsating against him before he began to work them in and out in small thrusts.

“Please,” she pleaded, knowing as well as he did that their journey would soon be at an end.  
Oliver responded by licking a heavy and almost vertical line from the top of her clit downward towards her labia where he did a u-turn with the tip and went straight back up the same line.

Her back arched into him, revelling in the deep penetration of his fingers and the smooth and intense strokes of his tongue before her limbs quivered and a strangled cry bled out from her lips. Her warm release coated his fingers before he enclosed his lips around her and teased his tongue inside her.

Before she could fully ride out her climax the car turned off the smooth street and onto a cobbled drive. She released her grip on his hair but Oliver stayed between her legs, feasting on her as they drew closer to the sound of lingering voices in the still night air.

“Oliver,” she pleaded, but he wasn’t going to stop until he had taken every last morsel.  
It was only when the car rolled to a stop that Oliver pulled back from her, gently lowered her dress and tucked a stand of hair behind her ear before he moved back to the seat and laved his fingers clean.

“You have something of mine,” she whispered as she adjusted herself and fanned the flush from her cheeks.  
Oliver patted his jacket pocket and smiled, “I’m keeping those Miss Smoak.”

 

* * *

 

  
It was an hour after they’d arrived and Oliver could still imagine the warm pink of her fleshy folds as his tongue teased the roof of his mouth. He watched as she pressed the delicate lip of a champagne flute to her lips while he imagined her thighs rubbing against her sex, still perhaps a little swollen and warm from her orgasm.

As if hearing the salacious thoughts of his mind, Felicity glanced across the room at him and touched a finger to the round of her hip. He knew what she was saying as he put his drink on the bar, slid his hand into his jacket pocket and felt the lush fabric of her panties between the balls of his fingers, before he gave her a quick wink.

“Oliver, we need to talk,” his mother said briskly, severing the view he had of Felicity as she stepped in front of him.  
“Now mother? But I’m not nearly drunk enough,” he groaned, somewhat playfully but with a hint of truth.  
“Oliver the global market is changing,” she spoke succinctly, his mother spoke as though she paid by the word and each one was always chosen so carefully.  
“Oh god, this really is a business chat,” his eyes widened in feigned disbelief before he sculled his drink and ordered another.  
Moira halted the order with a swift shake of her head and the bartended backed away.  
“Our footholds in China and Europe are flat-lining.”  
Oliver rubbed his fingers across his brow – because trying to somehow go from thinking about Felicity’s damp, naked thighs brushing together, to the world’s economy was no easy task.  
“I thought that was what dad was doing over there?” he leaned back against the bar and gestured for his drink.  
“This has gone beyond your father’s abilities I’m afraid.”  
A low-ball glass with ice and whiskey slid next to Oliver’s hand and his fingers moved like a vice around it. When he was satisfied she wasn’t going to steal it from his grasp, he moved it up towards his mouth.  
“Oliver I’m serious,” she remarked brashly as she laid a gentle, but not to be provoked, hand on his forearm.  
“What do you need from me?” Oliver asked, wetting his lips as his eyes travelled down to the drink in his hands.

“I intend to bring a fix to the table at the board meeting on Tuesday,” she began, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and dropping her left shoulder just enough for Felicity to come back into his view.  
Oliver drunk slowly while he nodded apathetically, “and what do you need from me?”  
“There might be some resistance to this proposal,” she paused to make sure she had his attention and Oliver smiled to allay her very valid fears, “I’d like your support.”  
“You always have my support,” he answered, a _tried and true_ response.

But he wasn’t really listening, his eyes were raptured in Felicity and his mind was anywhere but in this moment with his mother.  
“I need to be sure of that Oliver.”  
He smiled again, but this time his smile was directed at Felicity as she brushed a tumble of blonde hair over her shoulder.  
“Do you need the board’s support?” he reactively replied, though not entirely in keeping with her last words.  
“Theoretically no,” she sighed, “not with you and obviously your father in my corner, we would hold a majority.”  
“Then do it, you have my support.”  
“Don’t you want to know what the idea is?”

Felicity started walking and Oliver’s eyes walked with her. He could see the sweep of her ass and knowing that there was nothing beneath that dress made him bite down on his tongue and fist the glass in his hand while he imagined burying himself inside her.

“Is it your idea?” he hummed as he tracked Felicity over the rim of his glass while he took another drink.  
Moira turned, her eyes following Oliver’s wanton ones.  
“Yes,” she replied, with a cagey undertone.  
“And you’re certain this is what’s best for QC?”  
He could feel his eyes glazing over but he didn’t dare blink.  
She looked back at Oliver and noted the smile he tried to hide unsuccessfully behind his glass, “Yes.”  
“Then that’s all I need to hear,” he affirmed, though his tone was lacklustre at best.  
“I appreciate your support Oliver.”  
“You’ll always have it.”

She moved beside Oliver’s shoulders, brushing her slender fingers down the curve as though she was preening him in a motherly fashion.

“Your EA looks particularly lovely tonight,” she spoke coyly, his lack of eye contact with her had not gone unnoticed, nor had its recipient.  
Oliver smiled, once more behind the rim of his glass as he finished his drink.  
“I hadn’t really notice,” he lied before swiping his tongue between his lips. It may have tasted like alcohol but he swore he could still taste Felicity there too.

After placing his empty glass on the bar Oliver started to walk away before Moira caught his arm at the crook of his elbow.  
“Oliver, don’t,” she warned, her voice a low but resonating whisper.  
“Don’t what?” he shrugged.  
“She’s your subordinate.”  
Not last Friday night.  
“You worry too much mother,” Oliver laughed her off as he patted his fingers atop hers.

She didn’t release her grip though, “I’m aware of the money you used to back Tommy’s club.”  
Oliver’s hand dropped to his side and his eyes widened with shock.  
She continued, “You’re finance manager called a while back, he thought it prudent.”  
Oliver shook his head angrily, “And I think it prudent to now fire him.”

Her finger’s gripped Oliver’s arm tighter refusing to excuse him just yet.  
“He only knows about the investment with Thomas not what it was for,” she explained as she pursed her burgundy lips and straightened her svelte shoulders, “it was Malcolm who filled in the gaps for me, rather obtusely.”  
“Malcolm is an angry little man,” Oliver gritted, there was no love lost between Tommy’s father and himself and he had never made his disdain for him a secret.  
“Perhaps,” Moira sighed, “but you can ill afford the scandal of this getting out.”  
He wrestled her fingers from his arm, “Well we best hope it doesn’t then,” he assured her with a calming hand atop her shoulder, “you don’t need to worry yourself with that mom, I assure you.”

She sighed again and Oliver saw the same woman who had sat and watched his fractured wrist be set in a cast when he was 10. For all her business savvy, Moira Queen was still a mother at heart.  
“I won’t pretend to understand the workings of this club you’ve staked a lot of money in Oliver,” she spoke quietly and almost sadly at there being a part of her son she wasn’t fully privy to, “but I will offer you my opinion as both your mother and a woman, sex is never just sex, eventually it becomes something else.”

He smiled, he could see her inference – his sweet and demurely quiet EA dragged into his life of debauchery and sycophants. But, as Oliver remembered how she looked bringing that crop of hers against his thighs a few weeks ago, he couldn’t help but smile at just how wrong that inference was.

“Thank you mother, your concern is duly noted,” he offered her a debonair smile that did very little to allay her fears, “now if you’ll excuse me.”  
He slipped past her before she could offer him any further reason to stay.

* * *

  
A tap on Felicity’s shoulder drew her back from the small crowd she had been engaging with and she was met with the softly smiling face of a canapé waiter, “For you Miss,” he said as he handed her a note, folded into palm-size.

She opened it with her back against a wall and her eyes moved silently over the words.

 **Down the hallway, third door.**  
**I have something that belongs to you.**  
**– Bruce**

Felicity folded the note back up and slipped it into her small clutch. She took a precursory look around the room and, after being happy that no one was paying her any attention, she slipped from the party and followed Oliver’s instructions.

She knocked only the once on the ornate maple door before it opened and Oliver beckoned her quickly inside.

He closed the door with her against it, pressing his statuesque figure into her petite one. He kissed her neck while his fingers coiled around loose curls before his other hand reached around her and locked the door, the _click_ of it echoing through the empty billiards room.

“I have a proposal for you,” he hummed against the side of her neck, tasting her scent.  
“And here I was thinking I was the only one that made proposals,” Felicity replied, her words like warm honey to his ears and he couldn’t help but nip at the threads of her neck reactively.  
“A ransom demand then,” he whispered and she could feel the smile brushing across her skin.  
“And what exactly are you ransoming?”

Oliver stepped backwards and took her panties from his pocket, swaying the provocatively in mid-air before he touched them to his lips.  
“Their safe return,” he bargained as he floated the edges of them through the pads of his fingers.  
“Mister Queen,” she breathed, her chest pressing against her lace bodice, “I never imagined you to be a blackmailer.”  
“And I never imagined you to be…” he paused to bite his lip, his eyes shadowing over for just a moment, “…you.”

She wet the centre of her lips and smiled, “I’ll hear your demands.”  
“I want all of Tuesday with you, from the moment you arrive to the moment you leave and accompany me to Verdant.”  
She swallowed down his words and the rasped and needy tone they carried – what he was asking for went well beyond their set parameters.  
“And what did you have in mind?” she asked while she floated a finger down the centre of her dress, watching his eyes trail along behind it.  
“A few things,” he sighed before his glided his own fingers over the top of the path she’d carved, “all of which we can discuss on Tuesday, consent willing of course.”

Felicity had spent so long keeping work and _play_ separate – she was rather fastidious about that in fact – but ever since the Christmas party and their instigation of Friday nights, she was finding it harder to see the line she had once drawn so perfectly straight. So the idea of having an entire day between them, both intrigued and excited her.  
“And apart from the safe return of my panties, what do I get?” she asked as she tapped a curious finger to her rouge lips.  
Oliver raised his palms in an act of open surrender, “Anything you want.”  
A smile peaked across her lips, “Anything?”  
He chuckled at her devilish grin and nodded, _anything_.

Felicity put out her hand and Oliver swiftly took it to kiss the back of her fingers tenderly, “You know we don’t shake on our proposals Miss Smoak.”  
A soft laugh blanched her lips as his scruff tickled across her fingers, “A blood oath then perhaps?” she joked and Oliver’s ears lapped up the fruity notes of her laugh, he hadn’t realised just how much he’d grown to enjoy that sound.  
“We kiss on it,” he expressed while his fingers skimmed over her clothed mound and he dropped to his knees.  
“Wait,” she halted, smoothing her hands through his hair as he looked up at her, wounded.

“You can kiss me here instead,” she spoke engagingly soft as she dragged her thumb across her lower lip.  
Oliver stood and stationed his hands either side of her waist. His eyes studied her lips as her breath misted over them. He didn’t want to ask if she was sure, afraid that she would recant the offer if given made to believe he didn’t want it, but when Felicity pressed her chest to his and tipped her chin up towards him, he knew she had made up her mind and it wasn’t about to change.

He leaned down and captured her lips gently between his. It was hesitant at first as he enjoyed the way they melded around him. He had always fantasied that they would be soft, like velvet cushions, but they were even softer than his imagination had given them credit for.

His tongue traced the outline of her lip before she deliberately parted them and allowed him to gently slip his tongue inside. His fingers combed through her tresses while his palms cupped the back of her head. The door was rigid against her spine before she folded her arms around his neck and lifted herself against his warm chest. She could feel each breath he took expanding and pushing her breasts into her chest as the kiss deepened.  
  
She lightly tapped his tongue with her own and he reactively ventured deeper into the warm confines of her mouth. He moaned into the kiss as the she used just the tip of her tongue to trace the delicate underside of his while he roamed throughout her mouth.

It was unlike any kiss he’d ever had. It had gone past delicate and unsure but it wasn’t rushed or fanatic and as their lips massaged and caressed each other he decided that he would be quite willing to live in an indefinite loop of that kiss.

Their tongues retreated, satisfied, and his lips gently encased her top lip, outlining the dip of her cupid’s bow with precise and delicate strokes while she closed in around his bottom lip, sucking it gently into her mouth and nipping just the fray of it until they finally pulled away, smiling and breathless.

“We have a deal then?” he asked as he smoothed his thumb over her puckered lip.  
With their foreheads pressed together, their noses skimming the other’s cheek and their eyes woven around each other, Felicity answered, “We have a deal.”

His fingers rolled down the swerve of her body.  
“I was also wondering Miss Smoak,” she hummed at the gravel in his voice, “if I could put you on that billiard table behind me,” he nuzzled her cheek with his nose, “and sink myself into you.”  
She watched his eyes, hungry and dark with desire, before she let a smile trickle across her lips.  
“I’ll allow it Mister Queen.”

* * *

  
**[Tuesday Morning, 4 March 2014]**

“Good morning,” Oliver announced cheerily as he wore a salacious smile across his lips, apparently he hadn’t forgotten the deal they had bartered despite not speaking on it since Friday night.  
He put a coffee on her desk and she smiled a wordless _thank you_ before he perched himself on the edge of it and ran his fingertips down his bristled jaw, “Shall we discuss today?”

His eyes tracked down to the small gift bag at his feet and he didn’t try to stifle the giddy smile that flashed across his expression.

Felicity shrugged playfully as she crunched the stapler down at the corner of the patent application that she feathered in her fingers. He closed his thighs around his throbbing shaft, only Felicity could make the menial task of stapling paper into something erotic.

He wafted his fingers in the air between them, momentarily wishing he could openly stroke her cheek just to feel the warmth that he could see radiating under her skin. She watched his fingers and slowly shook her head because whatever game they would embark on today couldn’t include open displays like that.

Her phone which was sat between them sparked to life and both sets of eyes dropped reactively to the screen. For Felicity it brought recognition but for Oliver it simply brought questions his mouth opened to ask but his brain disavowed.

The screen simply read, without icon or image, one word:  
_Wolfe_

She could see the interest in his eyes and the unasked questions hung from his lips as she sent the call to voicemail, she would call him back later when both time and privacy allowed.

“Ask the question Oliver,” she said his name barely above a whisper, worried that someone may equate her informality with him as something else, ironically probably something not too far from the truth, _but all the same._  
“Is that someone you’re seeing?” Oliver wrung his hands over each other as he asked the question he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to.

He was well aware of the parameters they had both adopted for this ‘ _colleagues with kinky benefits_ ’ situation. They were not expressly exclusive and could see other people if they wished to, although if asked it should be readily admitted. _No secrets_.

“No,” she answered simply and Oliver’s face was awash with relief, at least for a moment, “he is however an ex-mate,” the relief dissipated, “We remain friends and talk occasionally but no, I don’t know why he’s calling me this morning.”  
Oliver nodded, if only to acknowledge she had spoken.

“Does that bother you? That I’ve been with other _people_?” she asked directly, her eyes watching his for any contradiction between them and the words she knew he would say.  
“No,” he replied, idly shifting the knot of his Italian silk tie, “it’s not like I haven’t been with other women.”  
He blinked all too aware that she was studying all forms of his response.  
_It couldn’t and it shouldn’t matter._  
_It was unrealistic to want to have been the only man to be with her._

“Good,” she breathed, appeased by his response, “because I find most forms of jealously distasteful.”  
He watched her lips move sullenly before she let a smile rise over them, “So shall we discuss today’s _agenda_?”  
He gathered the bag at his feet and gestured for Felicity to go first. She did so without question but once they were both behind his closed office door she turned to face him with a knowing smirk threaded across her lips.  
“I know why you do that,” her delicate hands smoothed down the sides of her lustrous black dress.  
Even if he wanted to he couldn't disguise his smile, “do what?”  
Felicity walked deeper into his offer, her luscious hips swaying with each light tap her nude heels made on the marble floor, “Make me go on ahead of you,” she chastised before she sat in her usual chair.  
“And yet you don’t fight me on it?” he remarked, watching as she feathered the ends of her long, sleek ponytail before she folded her arms across her lap.  
“Why would I?”

Oliver floated around the back of his desk and fell fluidly into his chair. He unbuttoned his jacket and flicked out the tails of it before he rolled his chair closer to the lip of his desk. With his forearms flat against the top and his palms pressed together he leaned in, adamant to show his entire focus was on her alone.

“I would like a friend to join us Miss Smoak,” he spoke with an appealingly husky tone that Felicity allowed to tempt out a rolling quiver between her legs.  
Her lips pinged in surprise, and an eyebrow arched towards her hairline, _she hadn’t expected that._  
She crossed her legs and leaned into the perch of her chair, “I didn’t think you were the kind of man to share _Mister Queen._ ”  
The way she said his name had his balls tightening.

He leaned down and collected the nondescript black gift bag from near his feet. The sound of crinkling paper resonated in the thick, sexually-charged air as he pulled out a black velvet box that fit snuggly between his two palms.

He placed it gently on his desk top and slid it silently towards her.  
She smiled at it, wearily intrigued.  
“What’s this?”  
Oliver rocked his back into the chair and laced his fingers together, “Open it,” he encouraged.

Felicity ran a curious finger along the edge of the decadent velvet box before she pried it open. Sitting on a moulded pillow of black satin was a glass bulb in the shape of a teardrop and coloured a deep forest green.

She knew precisely what it was and she wasn’t surprised by his presentation of it.  
“This is my _friend_ Felicity.”  
Her finger ran over it, and the cool glass offered no resistance along its incredibly smooth slope, there could be no doubt that it was an expensive one.  
Oliver wet his lips, enjoying the way her eyes twinkled expressively, “It’s new and especially for you.”  
She ran her tongue across her teeth then her lips.  
“When do you want me to wear this?” she plucked the corner of her lip between her teeth, “and be specific, you know how I like specifics,” she added with a mischievous grin.

Oliver flexed his shoulders under his ebony suit, “I want you to wear it while we have sex in my office this afternoon, with the door locked and the windows tinted, but…” a smirked twitched his lips, “…we can still hear the footsteps on the tiles just outside so you’ll have to bite down on my hand to stifle those delicious cries,” he hummed as he imagined the clashing of pleasure versus pain throughout his body, “and again tonight when I have you against that window,” he added as he nodded towards the closest one.  
“That window?” she queried with a playfully pouted lip.  
A Cheshire-smile, “Or the one next to it if you prefer.”  
She uncrossed her legs and teetered her palm on the cusp of her knee.  
“Hmm, it depends on the view really.”  
Oliver felt the rise of a hitch in his breath before he realised he was anxious over her answer to his indulgent request, “So you’ll do it?”  
She closed the lid gently, “I’ll let you know my answer later.”

He accepted that condition with a simple nod.  
“Now, because we actually have work to do,” she started as she plucked her tablet from her lap and scrolled down it.  
Oliver sat back, half listening and half letting his cock thrum behind the front pleat of his pants as he considered just how amazing it could be if Felicity agreed.

* * *

  
“Shall we go Mister Queen?” Felicity asked as she peeked her head into his office.  
Oliver studied his watch and nodded, it was almost 3pm and he’d done well to remember he had a board meeting on the 8th floor at that time.  
“Shit,” he grumbled, only now recounting in part his discussion with Moira last Friday.  
“Is there a problem?”

Oliver stood and paced a sharp stride down the side of his desk.  
“My mother had some idea she wanted me to second.”  
Felicity looked down at her notes and crinkled her nose at the result, “I don’t have anything.”  
“You wouldn’t,” he let out a frustrated sigh, “because I never got them to you,” he scrambled paper across his desk as he spoke, searching for something although _what_ he wasn’t entirely sure.  
“Do you remember what it was?”  
He huffed an obtuse, “No,” before he walked back behind his desk and scrolled through his inbox. He found an email from yesterday that he hadn’t opened and cast a hurried eye across it.  
“Wait,” he coughed, “she’s doing what?”  
His eyes reread the few lines at least four times but it read the same each time.  
“Is everything okay?”

He wandered back around his desk to where Felicity was standing.  
“It seems my mother’s idea was to hire some business consultant to come in and tell us what we’re doing wrong,” he grunted, blowing out a raft of silent expletives.  
_And he’d promised his support._

“Probably some short fat guy in an ill-fitting suit who has never actually _run_ a business before,” he added vehemently.  
Felicity laughed at his pout as she fixed the knot on his tie, “I’m sure if your mother has hired him, then he’s probably very equipped to do his job regardless of his tailoring.”  
“Did she pay you to say that?” he quipped, lifting his chin as she primped his shirt collar.  
“Moira Queen is a very accomplished woman in the business world Oliver, I can appreciate her tenacity.”  
She flattened the lapels of his jacket with the palms of her hands.

“She on the other hand, thinks you’re far too innocent for my lewd eyes,” Oliver simpered, provoking an arched expression from Felicity, “Don’t worry, I don’t intend to correct her assumption.”  
Felicity ironed her fingers down the edges of his jacket, “Good,” she remarked before she fastened both buttons.  
“So, you’ll support your mother in this because you already said you would,” she looked up at him with questioning eyes.  
“Right,” he promised, tipped with one last sigh on the matter.  
“Despite your clear aggravation at the idea that someone might scrutinize how you work,” Felicity added as she turned on her heels and tap-tapped towards the door.  
“What’s wrong with how I work?” he asked as he scurried along behind her.

When they reached the elevators, she pressed a deep purple nail into the down button and turned towards him, “I’m sure you have _nothing_ to worry about.”  
The elevator doors opened to an empty cab and they walked inside before the brushed metal doors encased them.

“Do you think I have something to worry about?” he pestered as the red display numbers counted down the floors.  
“Relax Oliver,” she insisted, “I’m sure you have nothing to worry about and if I’m asked,” she paused to catch his eye, “I’ll be sure to give the consultant a glowing review of your managementary  _achievements_.”

The elevator _dinged_ and the doors spread open onto the bustling 8th floor.  
“You should have at least read the memo your mother sent you,” Felicity rebuked as they walked towards the Bay Room, aptly named for it panoramic view of Starling Bay.  
“You know that word gets me very turned on now,” he whispered before he shot her a wink.

She stopped him just before he entered the Bay Room, pulling him to the side and out of earshot to those mulling about.  
“There is something you should know Mister Queen,” she started as she folded her fingers through the ends of her hair, teasing his eyes.  
He looked at her with a curious expression.  
“Your _friend_ will be joining us today.”  
A smile beamed across Oliver’s face, reddening his cheeks and floating happily into his cloudless azure eyes.  
“I look forward to meeting him,” he said in a rasped whisper.  
“Actually,” a soft pout and a gentle flick of her hair “he’s here now.”  
Oliver choked on air, swallowing it down in gasps as a board member shot them an aggrieved looked before he disappeared into the Bay Room.

“You….already….” he stumbled to make anything coherent form from his mouth.  
“I thought it might make things interesting, these meetings are quite dull,” she shrugged before she started to walk away, with her trademark sway.  
She paused at the doorway and studied him over her shoulder, “are you coming?”

Once inside Oliver took his seat at the end of the table, as had become customary while his father was travelling. Moira would inevitably take the seat at the foot as they were the namesakes of this company after all.

Felicity took the seat clockwise to Oliver, reserving it with by placing her tablet on the glossy varnished desk, a shade not all too dissimilar to the one the desk at Verdant was coloured, a fact which didn’t escape either of them, Oliver smiling his recognition as he ran a finger along the bevelled edge.  
  
Felicity put her hand on the armrest of his chair and Oliver could feel her fingers as they lightly grazed his leg. She had discretely put her back to the rest of the room so no one could see her mouth moving and she was close enough to Oliver’s ear that she was certain not a soul could overhear what she was about to say.

“It went in very smoothly with just a little lube,” she whispered, purring the word _smoothly_ as though the two syllables caressed her tongue, “you made an excellent choice.”  
His fingers clasped at his rounded knee, anchoring his hands there.  
“It’s very tight you know, I can feel it when I walk,” Oliver didn’t dare look at her as she spoke, but he could imagine her pouted lips and doe eyes oozing with sexuality, “I imagine you’ll quite enjoy it.”  
He bit the inside of his lip to stop himself from sighing, or moaning, or _both_.

She pulled away slowly, noting the veil of sweat that glistened across his brow.

Wordlessly she walked over to the drink tray in the corner behind him and Oliver couldn’t help but walk his eyes along with her as he swallowed the groan hitched in his throat.

The dress moulded perfectly to her rear as she tipped her torso forward to pour two glasses of water. He watched the condensation drip down the glass and imagined quite vividly how water might traverse that perfect rear of hers – _or maybe another liquid._

His cock was thumping like a base drum between his legs and regardless of how hard he squeezed his thighs together it wasn’t shrinking. All he could do was be glad that the table wasn’t glass so his rock hard clothesline-dick was shrouded beneath the heavy oak.

He didn’t watch her walk back, afraid that doing so might cause his pants to combust or split apart if he grew any harder, but he did manage to look up at her when she placed one of the glasses on a coaster near his hand.  
“Thank you Miss Smoak,” he rasped in a low, guttural tone.

Arnold Gerber, a man well past 50, walked his eyes across the table, watching as Felicity took her seat and leaned forward to scoot her chair closer to the table. Her high neckline never afforded Mr Gerber any sort of view, but Oliver took an instant dislike to the way those beady greyish eyes were watching her like if given the chance he might like to see a little more of what she had.

Oliver clenched his jaw through visions of himself bounding across the table and wrestling the Head of Communications to the ground in a tussle fit for a reality TV show. But he reined it in as he remembered Felicity’s warning regarding her dislike for bouts of jealousy – so fight the rounded Executive he would not, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t narrow his eyes and grow at the man – so Oliver did both.

Whether he heard the growl or noticed Oliver’s venomous glare wasn’t clear, but Mr Gerber did lower his eyes moments later.

While he didn’t turn his head towards Felicity, he could see her well enough in his peripheral and he was soon inundated with thoughts about her, lewd and wild thoughts about how her back passage must be swelling with his gift. He could feel his body temperature rising like an animal on heat and he drunk half the glass of water she’d gotten for him in seconds.

He watched her surreptitiously as a tiny wince flickered across her lips when she crossed her creamy-smooth legs.  
_She felt that, God she can feel it._  
He jammed his thumbnail into the fleshy part of his thigh in a bid to silence the painful throbbing urge between his legs, but whatever sudden and jarring effect it had was only momentarily and he was soon back to feeling his blood all pooling there.

Oliver was so deep in the fantasies rolling through his head that he didn’t notice when his mother entered the room with her kindly EA a few steps behind her. Raisa, an older woman who Oliver had known most of his life, collected Moira a glass of water and a black coffee before she trotted out of the room and closed the door behind her.

“Thank you everyone,” Moira began, silencing the idle chatter in the room almost immediately. Oliver had to hand it to his mother, she was never the shrinking wallflower, “and thank you Miss Smoak for taking the minutes for today’s meeting, when we conclude you can pass them along to Raisa who will circulate them appropriately,” she concluded as she looked down the 13 foot table at Felicity.  
“Yes Mrs Queen,” Felicity answered demurely, as was her nature in this role.  
_And for ensuring my son actually made it to this board meeting,_ went unsaid but understood between the two women regardless.

Oliver watched as Felicity brushed a finger down her neck, noting that there was a slight dusting of perspiration glistening there. She shifted in her seat, pressing more weight onto one leg than the other, and Oliver bit back his smile as he imagined the glass, now warmed to her body heat, pressing against her walls while the neck of it stretched her opening.

He watched as she swallowed nothing, a look of concentration framed with something else etched in her face, it wasn’t pain but it was near to it.  
_Fuck, it turned him on._

He spent what felt like fleeting moments imaging the noises she would make when he sunk himself into her entrance, her body so full and sated. He thought about what position they could adopt when safely locked behind his office door and he decided without any argument that he needed to watch her face the first time.

To have her straddling his lap would be perfect; he could push her dress up around her waist and his fingers could trace the rim of the plug as he entered her slowly from the front. He could watch her face and capture any of the noises that might spring from her mouth because, while not paper thin, his walls weren’t soundproof after all.

If she permitted it, he would unzip her dress and slip it down her arms to allow his mouth to tease her nipples.  
_It would be amazing._

“Oliver?”  
He startled back to reality to find that everyone was looking at him and he didn’t have the faintest idea why.  
Felicity quickly typed out a note and turned her device towards him – _The consultant. Say yes, you agree with the proposal._

He thanked her with a brief but noted smiled before he clasped his hands purposefully together and spoke, “Yes, I agree with Moira’s proposal. We should do that.”  
“So you’ve read all of this?” one of the other board members quipped as he waved around a document that looked to be at least 25 pages’ thick.

Oliver blinked down to find the same document in front of him, although he had no recollection of getting it. He looked down the table and saw the anxiety in his mother’s eyes.  
“Absolutely,” he lied as he watched Moira’s anxiety dissipate.

“Perfect,” Moira announced, abruptly shutting down any further discussion on the matter, “with Arnold, Robert, Oliver and myself we make up enough of the shareholding to approve this and I hope you, as the heads of your respective departments get on board,” she eyed up the one who had questioned Oliver’s comprehension of the matter narrowly, “the man we have brought in is _exceptionally_ qualified and has had _remarkable_ successes with companies in far worse shape than ours, so it is in our _best_ interests to bring him on _before_ we actually need him.”  
She finished quite succulently and the room had nothing more to say on the matter. Oliver nodded too, but honestly, he hadn’t been listening. Rather, he’d been watching Felicity breathe, noting the way her chest rose and fell with each breath she took and imaging how that might quicken and become erratic when she thrust down on his cock.

There was nothing else to discuss and when Oliver checked his clock he realised he’d managed to day dream away an entire 40 minute meeting.

The room emptied before Oliver took a moment under the desk to adjust himself well enough that he could stand without taking an eye out. He had hoped to wait until Moira left, but as she started to walk towards him, he realised he wasn’t that lucky.

“Oliver the consultant is in my office upstairs,” she started as Oliver wrestled himself lethargically to his feet, “perhaps you’d like an opportunity to meet him first.”  
He looked forlornly over at Felicity who was placing their glasses on the tray in the centre of the table, leaning forward just enough to give a view that produced a rousing thrum down his chest.

He just wanted to take her upstairs, into his office, lock the door and fuck like the world might end tomorrow; and, judging by the sweat pooling at the base of her neck, he was pretty sure Felicity wanted the same thing.

“Felicity is welcome to come with us,” Moira added, undoubtedly sensing Oliver’s reservation at leaving her, though he doubted she understood why, “It will give me a chance to properly thank the woman who has whipped my son into shape over the last few months.”

Felicity hid her amusement at the double entendre well. Oliver did not.  
He forced out a fake cough in an attempt to mask his laugh.  
No one brought it and Felicity grimaced while his mother shook her head, confused by what exactly her son had found so amusing.  
  
The elevator ride up to the top floor started off as a silent one, with Moira stood between Oliver and Felicity, although a foot in front of them, allowing a stolen gaze or two to be shared.  
“I meant it Miss Smoak,” Moira finally ended the silence while she tipped her head back towards Felicity, “you’ve proved to be quite the hire for Oliver so I trust he treats you well.”  
“He does Mrs Queen, quite well,” Felicity answered without a break in her gentile smile – she was far better at this double life than Oliver was.

Although, as she spoke, her weight shifted from one foot to the other and Oliver couldn’t help but visualise how that glass teardrop must be moving as she does…. _Fuck_ , he could feel himself sweating at the picture painted in his mind.

“I’ll admit, when he first presented me with your name and résumé I was confused by his decision and I wholly believed he was testing me,” a chuckle left his mother’s lips – a rare display.  
Oliver smiled, _he had been._  
“But you have proved yourself very valuable and Oliver has certainly made progress on a _professional_ level.”  
Felicity caught it, and by the slight tug on Oliver’s brow, he did too. But the door dinged and they stepped out of the elevator before anyone could (if they even should) challenge her words and it was left as it was.

Moira walked briskly to her Office with Oliver a step or two behind. Felicity veered to the right to give the minutes of the meeting to Raisa.

Oliver’s eyes tracked to a man standing in front of the floor to ceiling windows that almost took up an entire wall of his mother’s grandiose office, but his mind was stuck running a loop of what she had said in the elevator.  
_What did she mean “professionally” – or rather what did she mean by the tone in which she said it? Was she asking Felicity to progress him personally as well – or was she warning against it?_

He heard his mother say something to the tall, dark-haired figure and he forced his questions down and his head up.  
“Please, call me Alexander.”  
His accent was British, thick and deep, and it was enough of an interest to hold Oliver’s attention.  
“This is my son, Oliver Queen,” Moira introduced and the man, in an impeccably-tailored navy suit complete with sterling silver cufflinks and a simplistically sophisticated brushed silver tie clip, stepped closer.  
“Good afternoon Mister Queen, my name is Alexander Wolfe,” he charmed, extending his hand towards Oliver.  
Oliver took it and noted the unquestionable firmness of the man’s handshake “Mister Queen is my father, please call me Oliver.”  
“I extend the same courtesy then, please call me Alexander.”  
A magnetic smile blanched Alexander’s lips, hooking the left side a little higher than the right.

Felicity stepped through the office door and stopped mid-stride, taking a surprised gulp of air.  
“Alexander, this is my secretary Felicity Smoak, Felicity this is…”  
Alexander stepped forward and gently touched her elbow as he leaned in and brushed a kiss to her cheek, “it’s nice to see you again Felicity.”

Oliver blinked as the cogs in his head turned at full speed.  
_They knew each other._  
The call this morning,  
_Wolfe_  
_Megan_ had a rich benefactor who’d given her the membership to Verdant.  
_Felicity’s words “He’s an ex-mate”_  
They know each other.

He bounced his eyes from one to the other before they settled on Felicity.  
He could feel his heart racing as his head connected the dots.  
_Alexander Wolfe was Wolfe, the ex-mate who had been ringing her this morning._

“Fuck.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He's baaaaaack.
> 
> What I said about no love triangle stands, just fyi. ;)


	8. The Insidious Mr Green

_Fuck_  
He’d said it out loud.  
He hadn’t meant to, but considering there were three sets of eyes now weighing him up, it was pretty apparent to Oliver that he had said it _out loud._

Looking around the room, his mother's eyes were best summed up as shocked, maybe just a slight colouring of appalled too. He didn’t think it was his vocalisation of the word _Fuck_ because it was hardly the first time she had heard him say it, albeit it may have been the most expressive time. No, Oliver decided that her shock was more for the delicate sensitivities of the other people in the room and the worry that Oliver may have sullied them.

 _If only she knew._  
Her worry was misplaced though because neither of the other two people in the room, Alexander or Felicity would be considered ‘delicate’.

The next pair of eyes were _his_ , Alexander’s, and Oliver found his own eyes narrowing tightly. This was a man who had enjoyed what he had. He had felt every inch of Felicity too, perhaps he’d also discovered that single freckle on her upper right thigh – it was perfect and round and sat beautifully brilliant against her milky complexion.

Had _Wolfe_ made her cry out like Oliver had?  
Had he feasted on her like a ravenous crazed person?  
_Had Alexander Wolfe made Felicity happy?_

The eyes of his love nemesis were thoroughly unreadable, but beneath naturally expressive brows Oliver saw, perhaps, _amusement_?

The final set were the ones he was both terrified and desperate to read. His pointed exclamation was hardly going to be well received by Felicity. Looking at her, Oliver realised her stare might have been even more unreadable than that of her _past lover_ ; he shuddered when his brain pinned that title to Mr Wolfe, but it was unavoidably accurate.

Her lips were tight at the corners and soft in the centre, almost like a small ‘O’ formed in the middle of them. She wasn’t embarrassed and no pink flush warmed her cheeks beyond the usually swipe of blush she wore. The bridge of her nose was crinkled in a way that may have been confusion but could also easily be disbelief.

But it was her eyes that were the closest to giving him anything to work with, the pupils were swollen but not quite blown wide, she was holding something back and the irises were a tempestuous sea of blues with an undercurrent of green. They were deeper and more shadowed than he had seen them before and if they were in darker lighting he might have mistaken them for Megan's.

 _Anger_? Not quite.  
_Disappointment_? Yes.  
He wished for anger instead.

“You and Felicity know each other?” Moira asked, her carefully enunciated tone breaking the awkward silence that had cloaked the four of them.  
Felicity shifted her weight from one foot to the other sharply and the sudden movement instantly reminded her of Oliver's _friend_. She sewed her lips closed and swallowed the urge to moan as her body tightened around it. She needed to relax, but it seemed beyond even her level of calm to do so at that moment.

“Felicity and I have worked together in the past,” Alexander explained, a dashing smile to accompany the same, smooth-English voice that would have been at home reading sonnets for a books-on-tape series, “we remain associates.”  
_Worked together, that’s what he was going with?_ Oliver lamented internally as a sudden and near-on blinding _thump_ started through his temples.  
“Fuck,” he grumbled for the second time in the space of a minute, “I forgot I have a deadline thing for the thing on the thing,” he added with a jumble of stunted words before he audibly puffed out air, “right Miss Smoak?”

 _Now she looked angry._  
Probably because he’d just involved her in his pathetic attempt to gloss over his expletive exclamation.  
“What thing Oliver?” Moira asked, her head cocking to the left as the only person in the room who didn’t know what was going on.  
Oliver scratched his head and squinted, “the meetings.”  
He watched Felicity silently sigh before she forced a smile onto her face and rescued him from his sinking ship of words, “What Mister Queen is attempting to say is that we have budgeting and purchasing requisitions to make before close of business today in order for them to be ready for his soft launch on the new designs for the Smart Home range.”

Oliver nodded along fervently. How everything that came out of her mouth was cohesive yet his was a bumbling mess simply solidified the fact she needed a pay rise and this job was significantly beneath her.

“What she said,” Oliver smiled as he pointed a finger gun toward Felicity and _clicked_ it.  
“Well then, you should…” Moira paused, unsure what awkward vortex she was standing in the midst of, “…do that then.”  
“It was a pleasure to meet you Oliver,” Alexander extended a hand and Oliver took dutifully, “albeit briefly.”

Oliver grimaced a smile and managed a short, “my apologies,” before he broke the handshake and headed towards the door.  
“It was nice to see you again Mister Wolfe,” he heard Felicity say in a voice that sounded warm and endearing and it took Oliver a large amount of restraint to not stamp his foot petulantly – because at least some part of him recognised how utterly ridiculous he was being.  
“And you Felicity,” husky, soft, _fucking charming_ , “I’m sure we’ll see each other around.”

* * *

  
The elevator ride back down to their floor was taken in absolute silence. There is a saying that the air was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop, but in this instance it wasn’t a pin dropping that Oliver could hear like a freight train thundering between his ears, it was the sound of his own heartbeat, _thump, thump, thump-thump._ He would have smiled at the parallels between the way her heels clipped on the marble and the way his heartbeat echoed almost identically but he was too busy trying to figure out what the hell he was going to say to Felicity.

She still didn’t say anything when the doors opened on their floor and she walked out. In fact, Oliver couldn’t even enjoy the view as he walked a step and a half behind her while the silence hung thick between them.

He followed obediently when she walked into his office, but instead of taking her usual seat like Oliver expected, Felicity made a beeline for his executive bathroom at the far end of the room. She glanced over her shoulder when she reached the door and gestured him inside with a rigid nod of her head.

He skipped forward and obeyed and once he was inside the small but comfortable bathroom, Felicity closed the door and _finally_ looked at him.  
“What was that?” she asked, not angrily as Oliver had been prepared for, but genuinely befuddled by the mess that was _FuckGate_.  
“That’s your ex-boyfriend?”  
Her nose crinkled, uneasy at the use of the title, “I don’t enjoy the label, but yes I suppose people might call us that.”

Oliver found himself pacing the length of the single shower door, “He knew you as both Megan and Felicity?”  
He watched her breasts rise as her chest expanded with a heavy breath.  
“He helped create Megan, so yes.”  
The hand Oliver had been repeatedly combing through the shorts of his hair halted at the crown before it fell away limp and crashed against his upper thigh.  
“Wait he was your first?” even once he’d asked the question his jaw hung open.

She chuckled, bubbly and light like he’d just told some form of a knock-knock joke, “In the conventional sense no, that _accolade_ belongs to my college boyfriend,” she leaned a shoulder against the wall in the space between the basin and the door, “But as it relates to how you know me, yes.”  
Logically Oliver understood she had to have a _first_. He had a first, but she was mean and manipulative and not in a good way and Felicity’s ‘first’ was an English Gentleman!Daddy, it was hardly comparative.

“You were quite content this morning knowing that I had been with other _people_ Oliver,” her arms folded across her chest, the humour now all but vanished, “what’s changed between then and now?”  
“I wasn’t expecting a James fucking Bond type.”  
She let go of an exasperated exhale.  
“I was expecting someone with the name Wolfe to be an old bounty hunter on a reality show,” he huffed as he scuffed his leather shoes against the floor, “with a fat gut and a handlebar moustache.”  
“Yes,” she mocked dryly, “because that’s my type.”  
“So no Biker Santa kink?” Oliver cringed, trying to infuse some joviality into the air that was thick with anything but.

Her lips pursed and then relaxed along with her stance, “So your acceptance over my sex life depends on what the person looks like?”  
_She had him there._  
There was no right answer to that question, because she was right. When he allowed himself to imagine that the people she had been with in the past were average people that posed little to no competition it hadn’t bothered him, but the reality that Felicity had spent time with someone like Wolfe had his mind spinning around the orbit of a jealous moon.

“How long were you mates for?” it was a question that had settled into his mind during the elevator ride down but he’d only just now been able to vocalise it.  
“Almost three years.”

Oliver spluttered rather loudly as his tongue fell to the back of his throat. He had been expecting a few months, nearly a year _at tops_ but to hear almost three years stripped the wind from his lungs almost instantly.

“That’s hardly a boyfriend, that’s a defacto partner,” he coughed, returning to raking his nails over his scalp.

Felicity didn’t have an answer, _it was what it was._  
“Did you move in with him?”  
He saw the frustration leak across her face.  
“Oliver, I will answer any question you have but it seems like right now you’re asking me questions that in all likelihood you don’t really want the answers to.”

 _Accurate_. But that didn’t seem to rein Oliver in.  
“He’s obviously here to win you back,” he snipped, really wishing someone would take this proverbial shovel out of his hands.  
“You’re being ridiculous,” Felicity clapped back, “this isn’t high school.”  
“Why else would he be here?”  
_Dig, dig, digging his own damn grave._  
Felicity’s arms banded tighter across her chest and her azure eyes stared bluntly at Oliver like tiny blue soul catchers, “Because it’s his job.”

Oliver returned to pacing, because at least then he stopped himself from asking questions he had no desire in knowing the answer to.

Felicity pushed off the wall and stood in front of his path, halting him abruptly. Her fingers tracked down to the brushed silver buckle on his belt before nimbly undoing it. Deftly she threaded the supple black leather through the loops on his belt before she tugged it free and expertly _cracked_ it like a whip in the empty space beside them.

“What are you doing?” he asked after she dropped the belt and it fell with a metallic _clink_ to the floor before she returned her lively fingers to the zipper of his pants.  
“You’re angry, frustrated, _jealous_ ,” she prattled, a seductive haze clouding her eyes before she rolled her teeth friskily over her bottom lip.  
She wasn’t wrong he admitted.  
“The best thing you can do with those emotions is fuck me with them,” she announced without the slightest blush, “because I sure as hell didn’t put your _friend_ up my ass to have an argument with you in your executive bathroom.”  
Oliver gulped down her words, his _friend_ was still there, enjoying her tightness.  
She peeled back his closure and smiled, “That’s not really a kink I’m interested in exploring.”

Oliver grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her up as his lips came crashing down onto hers. Their tongues battled and clashed around his mouth as Felicity fought to dominate the kiss Oliver had started. Her hand disappeared down his briefs and she released his throbbing cock moments later. It ached as it grew, hardening in her palm, while Felicity stoked her hand slowly down the shaft.

They tumbled backwards and Felicity hit the wall beside the door _hard_. She hissed at the impact as the unpliable toy shifted inside her, pressing hard into her walls. He nipped her lip when the hiss left off it and stretched it a fraction of an inch from her mouth before he leaned around her and locked the door with an echoed _click_.

His hand slid up her back with his knuckles grazing against the cold tiled wall before he reached the top of her dress. He tugged the zip tag down, peeling it like a second skin from her body and once there was enough give, he watched, besotted, as Felicity folded her arms out from it.

The bodice of the dress fell limp around her waist and Oliver’s eyes weaved up her creamy torso, ravishing her, as his knuckles followed up the sweeping curve of her ribcage. He wanted her as close to naked as she would allow. With a questioning eyebrow raised towards his hairline, Oliver’s fingers traced the scalloped outline of her ebony bra before they dropped between her breasts to toy with the clasp at the front.

Wordlessly Felicity shadowed his hands and guided them to open it. One slight of hand later, her bra fell open and his eyes devoured her. With his heart thumping heavily in his chest he grasped at her breasts hungrily which pushed her spine hard up against the wall. Felicity gasped sharply as an icy sensation cracked down her body.

His lips took her mouth again, roughly, and Felicity keened into the force of his tongue sweeping through her mouth. It was carnal and desperate and she would have and enjoy every second of it.

Her body lurched into his as his hand groped at her breast, moulding it between his palm and his fingers while he kissed the panted breaths that reactively fell from her mouth.

He teased her nipple, rubbing it in tiny circles with the smooth ball of his thumb as Felicity’s finger’s disappeared under his shirt, scaling the tight lines of his chest before she raked her nails back down.

Hurriedly she flicked the tail of his tie over his shoulder and made short work of his shirt buttons and when the sides of it fell open she clawed at him, relishing the hot groans that her nails elicited from deep within his chest.

She tore her lips from his and ran her tongue up the line of his jaw before she nipped at his lobe.  
“Are you angry Oliver?” she whispered, her tone smoky and appealing.  
He didn’t take any time to consider possible repercussions of his answer because that wasn’t what his mistress wanted and he knew it, “Yes,” he grunted.  
Her fingers coiled around his shaft, now fully erect and pulsing against her constraint, “are you frustrated?” she asked as she tightened her fingers around him, making the head of his cock ache.  
He gritted his teeth and pulled back his head so she could see the erotically-pained expression on his face and know just what she was doing to him before he answered with a gravelly “Yes.”

As if rewarding his honesty, Felicity loosened her grip and delicately smoothed the pad of her thumb over his slit, smiling at the moisture she discovered there.  
“And are you jealous _Mister Queen?_ ” she hummed as she played with his tip and rolled her fingers over the band of his engorged head.  
His deeply eclipsed eyes pierced hers, “Yes Miss Smoak, I’m jealous of every man that has seen you,” his eyes dropped to her chest, drinking her in, “every man that has touched you,” his fingers tickled up the centre of her body before they fell off at her chin, “I’m jealous of every name these lips have called out in pleasure aside from mine.”  
His thumb pressed into her bottom lip and glided to the corner, pulling it taut.

She leaned forward and peck a surprisingly chaste kiss to his lips before she took his hand in hers and dragged it slowly down her body, stopping at her clothed mound, “so, use that,” she whispered, folding his fingers until the cupped her sex, “make me say _your_ name.”

He sank his fingers into the fabric of her dress as her eyes lulled closed and she hummed a breathy instruction, “make me whimper it.”  
Oliver massaged the fabric with his deft fingers as he stroked his tongue across his lower lip before he leaned them close to her ear and whispered, “I’d rather make you scream it.”

When he pulled back she was smiling coyly. His large hands almost swallowed her thighs while they slid down to the hem of her dress before he shoved it crudely up until her dress was sitting like a slouched belt around her waist. Felicity’s next breath was effused with a bubbled laugh at both his candour and his neediness.

He slipped three digits under the band of her satin panties and smiled when they felt the wetness pooling between her folds. Keeping his eyes locked to hers and with a smirk flirting at the edges of his lips, Oliver tore her panties down, crouching with them as they rode down her legs.

Lifting one foot and then the other, Oliver guided the thin wisp of fabric from her feet and stroked his cock just the once as the silken material melted between his fingers.

On hands and knees Oliver kissed each of Felicity’s ankles, _a slave at her feet,_ before his lips slowly worked their way up her left leg. The closer he got to her centre, the deeper her delicious aroma became until he could almost taste it on his tongue. His hands cupped her ass when his lips reached the junction of her thighs before he pressed a delicate kiss to her nether lips. He groaned salaciously and reactively against her dripping folds when the tips of his fingers grazed over the smooth base of the plug.

“Did you think I was lying?” she laughed impishly at his reaction to discovering it.  
“No,” his eyes traversed her body before he winked, “but discovering it is quite the pleasure.”  
His lips formed around her sex again before he sliced his tongue through her folds, gathering her warm, silky juices with the tip.

Her legs spread wider to accommodate him as Oliver drove his tongue deeper into her sanctum as his throat hummed through his savoured enjoyment. Felicity braced herself against the wall with flat palms, steadying herself as Oliver lifted her leg and guided it over his shoulder. Her body teetered a little on the single black pump before she balanced her elbow against the floating basin.

His tongue skirted her entrance in slow, methodical sweeps before he stroked the flat of it in one swift strike up to her clit where he pebbled it between his lips. His tongue, now pointed, circled her pearl slowly, switching directions like a pendulum while his fingers gently rimmed the base of the plug.

He twisted it slowly and Felicity gasped as the smooth sphere grazed her canal. The crown of her head tapped against the wall, skewing her once perfectly straight ponytail.

He watched her for what seemed like hours, as her expression leaked with decadent pleasure. He imagined the way the smooth surfaces teased her in a way he never could.  A blush swept across her faces and leaked down the porcelain slopes of her chest as her breathing became stilted and uneven.

Oliver kissed her folds again, delightfully finding fresh wetness which he greedily devoured with delectable hums. Moments later, he left off from the plug and rode the smooth curve of her leg over his shoulder before he gently helped it down while his lips fell away from her sex and he rose to his feet.

With a smile glossed in her juices, Oliver pressed his pulsing cock between her folds and fed her leg around his waist where her heel locked into the small of his back.  
“I don’t have a condom in here,” he rasped before she kissed the sheen from his lips.  
Tasting herself on him was nothing short of _fucking fantastic_ , the subtle notes of salted-sweetness with just a hint of his permeating aftershave.

“We don’t need one,” she replied, her voice hauntingly soft, a fraction above a whisper.  
Their respective screenings had come back clean and Felicity had indoctrinated Oliver on the effectiveness of her IUD. The 'condoms on Friday night' rule had simply being to control the mess, but neither of them were in a state of dress that could have them wander into Oliver’s office and collect one from the rubber band box, and neither of them were prepared to halt long enough to make it so.

He dropped his lips to her neck and delicately traced the sinewy lines down towards her shoulders, pausing at the base to lightly nip her with his teeth.  
“How would you like it?” he growled, his breath dampening her skin.  
The leg banded around Oliver’s waist tightened, pulling him closer and feeding his cock deeper into her folds, “Hard.”

Oliver smiled as he guided his tip to her entrance. She sucked air through her clenched teeth as she rolled her hips forward, both desperate to feel her body swell with him and preparing herself for the pain-tipped pleasure of the same. Oliver filled her at the best of times, stretching her tight body around his engorged cock, so she could only imagine how it would feel while her body was already crowded with his gift.

His hand stroked her cheek and lifted her eyes up to pin to his.  
“Tell me if it’s too much,” he stated as his other hand gripped her hip.  
She nodded slowly while she kept her eyes where he’d guided them, _on his._

Oliver thrust forward, deep and fast and Felicity’s eyes blew wide as her mouth gaped open. His lips caught hers before she could scream and kissed her fiercely as her body trembled against his.

He could feel the solid curve of the glass bulb rolling over the head of his cock and fighting for space inside her as he worked up a slow, but plunging rhythm all while his lips stayed tethered to hers, kissing away her silent screams.

Desperate for air, her lips broke from his while her shoulders curved inward. She could feel each move he made with so much intensity that her toes felt numbed and her legs almost limp. Sensing her lethargy, Oliver coupled both his hands to her waist, feeding one under the crook of her raised knee.

“I have you,” he whispered and Felicity gave into it, letting her body relax as Oliver took her weight.  
Her head tipped back, sliding against the smooth, undoubtedly expensive, tiles as euphoria clouded her eyes.  
When her body had settled into his slow thrusts she snapped her head forward and caught her lips between her teeth while she watched Oliver _enjoy the fuck out of the moment._

“Faster now,” she encouraged, desperate to chase the next sensation, whatever it might be.  
A smiled brimmed across Oliver’s lips before he wet them with a lick of his tongue and did just as she asked.

His thrusts lifted her body up the wall until only the tips of her toes balanced on the very edge of her shoe. Her head dropped to his neck, dancing uneven kisses along the salty trails his sweat had left on his skin.

“Bite me,” he begged, almost breathless as he bucked himself deeper, “When you want to scream, bite me.”  
She swirled her tongue in the dip of his shoulder before she dragged her lips across his expensive suit jacket. She could taste the airy notes of his cologne and smell the musky scent of his sweat.

His hands tightened at her waist as he continued to build up speed, pummelling her body with quick, hard pumps of his member. When one particularly fervent thrust sent an intense bolt across her entire body, Felicity’s teeth clamped in around the curve of his shoulder and Oliver moaned hotly at his own delirious pain.

She had bitten him _hard_ and his skin ached at the assault as he petted her name with his lips, “yes Felicity, yes.”  
He liked the pain, enjoyed it, _relished_ in it and when her body grew tight around his cock he knew she did too.

His thrusts became almost frenzied and his breathing feared no better. She bit him again, fighting back her screams as Oliver encouraged her with his salacious groans.  
“You wanted hard,” he mumbled into her cheek now damp with sweat and pasted with strands of fallen hair.  
“Yes,” she huffed in a short, sharp breath.  
His nose skimmed her flushed face and inhaled her heady scent deeply as it radiated from her skin.  
Her head tipped back against the wall, her vision a flurry of shapes and lights as she gave herself over to only one feeling, “tell me how it feels Mister Queen,” she sighed coquettishly.

He watched her breasts redden as her body temperature rose with each thrust. He could feel his shirt mopping up the pool of sweat in his lower back and he could hear the desperation in her short breaths.

She was close.

Felicity could feel her orgasm bearing down on her as her shoulders trembled and her core tightened like a band across her belly. Some senses heightened as other’s dulled and she relished in the sound of his cock slipping wetly in and out of her body even though she couldn’t feel a damn thing from her knees down.

Her walls ached and throbbed, clenching in spasms at both entrances as it almost became all too much for her. She muffled another scream into the expensive woollen blend of his jacket before she lifted back off him and caught his head between her hands.

She could only imagine what he was feeling, the juxtapositions of her soft sheath and the hard glass; the warmth of her body as it sweltered around him and the rolling clenches of her cushioned walls.

But even as the pleasure of it was clearly written across his face, she wanted him to say it.  
“Is this what you wanted?” she panted as she raked her nails down his jaw.  
His sharp eyes focused in on hers and she could see the remnants of his jealousy caught there.  
“Will you let me come?” she asked before Oliver bobbed his head ardently.

Her breasts bounced with each thrust and her skin was dusted in a glossy pink while she chewed at her swollen lip.  
_“I’d rather make you scream it.”_  
His playful taunt echoed in both of their heads as Felicity drew desperately close to fulfilling it.

The sound of his body slapping against hers.  
The feeling of her nails dredging his scalp.  
The hot, heady air that draped over them.

Everything took her closer…her eyes lolled, her lips fell open, her walls crumbled…and then there was a knock.

For a moment Felicity had thought she’d imagined it, but when another almost identical one echoed through the bathroom, resonating only inches from her ear, she knew it was no climax-related hallucination.

It took Oliver another two thrusts to stop.  
But he finally did, buried inside her with her walls tremoring around his shaft and the plug pressing in against his tip.

Her wild eyes screwed shut, like she was focusing everything she had on stemming the orgasm that she was so close to releasing. Her lips pursed and twitched as she tried to breathe through the pain of denial.

“Oliver?” Moira’s voice came muffled through the maple door, “are you in there?”  
Oliver pressed a single finger to his lips as he let Felicity’s leg dangle. He slowed calmed his ragged breathing with a few deep, but silent, breaths before he answered her.  
“I’m a bit busy in here, can I see you when I’m done?”  
He brushed back strands of wet hair from Felicity’s face as she trembled against him, her body so desperate to climax.  
“I’d like an explanation on what that was in my office.”  
Oliver grimaced as she reminded him of what he’d managed to forget, even for just a moment.  
“Sure thing.”  
Felicity sobbed into his shoulder as her need became unbearable.  
“Mr Wolfe seems to have shrugged off your off behaviour but I haven’t.”  
He could hear the exasperation in his mother’s tone, but his concerns only lay with Felicity.

He lightly stroked his free hand down her arm before he dipped it between their wet, melded bodies.  
“Now is really not a good time to discuss this mother,” he groaned as he felt his way to Felicity’s sex.  
She shuddered when his fingertips reached her tightly wound clit.  
“I hope you apologise to Felicity because that was quite an embarrassing display on your behalf.”  
He fondled her nub with a feather light touch that felt like an inferno to Felicity as she suppressed her cries into his jacket.

“I’ll be sure to,” Oliver offered before he whispered a delicate “thank you,” into Felicity’s ear.  
He continued to stroke her while he kept his cock stilled inside her.  
“Where is she?” Moira asked, oblivious, “I would like to offer her my own apology too, poor thing look mortified.”  
Oliver studied her face – _mortified_ wasn’t the word he’d use.  
“She had her back to the wall with something that needed _filling_ out _downstairs_ ,” he grinned when Felicity looked at him wide-eyed, “when she _comes_ back I’ll let you know.”  
He swirled another few circles around her before caressing the pearl between his thumb and forefinger when Felicity felt the sudden surge of her silent and breathless release.

She bit into his shoulder and Oliver swallowed the need to cheer as Felicity came in a gush of warm, silken release that blanketed his cock.

“Fine,” Moira huffed, “but Oliver…”  
“Mmm,” was all he could manage as he skimmed his digits through Felicity’s slick heat.  
“I expect you to support Mr Wolfe. He knows what he’s doing.”

The sound of her shoes tapping across his office grew distant, but it wasn’t until they both heard the sound of his office door closing that they finally let themselves breathe.

Before Felicity could chastise him, Oliver pressed himself deeper into her pulsing walls and let the feeling of her trembling and rolling climax massage him to his own, which they did only moments later in ribbons of pulsed seed that filled her warmly.

“Will it stay in the rest of the day Miss Smoak?” he asked as his fingers travelled between her legs and brushed against the base of the plug.  
She pushed back his hair from his temples and sighed, “Oliver, we did this to release emotions that were going to have you say something you would regret, but that’s where today ends,” she remarked, kindly but resolutely.

He slipped out, feeling the wetness between her thighs as her skin was moist from both of their spends. He padded the short walk to the toilet and fisted a handful of toilet paper before he cleaned himself off and flushed it away.  
“I don’t understand,” he said with a pinched brow.

“I told you I find jealously distasteful and I meant it,” Felicity sighed as she regained feeling in her limbs, “Alexander will be spending time here at QC and I expect that I will catch up with him outside the office as well.”  
Oliver’s lips furrowed apprehensively.  
“If that’s not something you can handle Oliver,” she continued as she clasped her bra closed and threaded her arms through the sleeves of her dress, “…then we should put an end to this now because I won’t be stroking your ego every time it gets bruised.”  
She zipped herself up and slicked back her hair, smoothing down any fly-aways.  
“What does that mean?” he asked, the trepidation in his voice morphing to frustration.

“This isn’t high school,” she said coolly, “if you don’t feel you can act professionally around a man that I have been intimate with then _this_ ,” her eyes roved down his chest before she took her panties from his jacket pocket, “can’t continue because I will not risk my privacy if you intend to engage in a pissing match with a man you will lose to.”

Oliver’s eyes recoiled, “I’m sorry?”  
Felicity offered him a pleasing smile and a kind sigh, “I don’t mean that with any level of offense Oliver, but within the business world he is far more adept at his job than you are. His fortune is his own and he’s very secure in himself because he has had more years to gain that than you have.”  
Sometimes Oliver delighted in Felicity’s honesty but this wasn’t one of those moments.  
  
She noted his pouted lips and she plucked them playfully with her finger, “But, I am with you, not him,” she soothed.  
“So he is here for you?”  
Her head shook softly, “I don’t speak for other people but no, not a bone in my body believes that. But it’s you who has to believe in the end because I’m not a prize to be fought over.”

He cupped her shoulders and ran his thumbs over the cusp of them, “Alright, you’re right,” he agreed.  
“Take some time Oliver and give me your decision on Friday.”  
She wasn’t about to accept one that had been made mere minutes after he emptied himself inside her and was still living off tantric fumes.  
“I won’t see you tonight?”  
Felicity tucked his softened cock back behind his briefs and pulled his pants over the rounds of his buxom ass, “I think it’s best you evaluate the situation and make sure it’s within the realms of what you can accept,” she spoke as she tucked in the ends of his shirt and zipped up his pants.  
Oliver didn’t want to accept what she was saying, but he understood her reasons so he agreed all the same.

“Now,” she hummed as she patted the front of his pants, “if you’d allow it I would be grateful for the use of your bathroom for a few minutes to clean myself up. I don’t fancy walking bow-legged to the bathroom down the hall.”  
“Absolutely,” Oliver said as he side-stepped her and reached for the door handle, “What is your pleasure Miss Smoak in repayment for mine?” he asked as he paused the door a crack open.

“Seeing as I reneged on the decision first Mister Queen, it’s only fair that you’re now off the hook.”  
Oliver’s lips formed a smirk, “A deal is a deal Felicity.”  
“Tell me your answer on Friday and I’ll tell you what I want from you,” she bartered.  
Oliver accepted with a nod and a “fair enough,” before he left.

* * *

  
It was an hour or so later that found Oliver back up on the top floor standing a little way back from the office Alexander had been given not far from Moira's. It was his father's office when Robert was there but for now the Bay views belonged to Mr Wolfe.

Oliver fastened the button on his jacket and brushed his fingertips along his shoulder, enjoying how the slight tenderness he found there reminded him of what he’d had with Felicity.

He looked towards Alexander's half opened door _and what he could lose._

The sensation became a bittersweet one as he tried to force the latter from his mind. Felicity was adamant her ex mate had no intention of trying to win her back, all Oliver needed to do was get over the jealousy bubbling in his stomach and believe the same.

_Ignore the insidious nature of Mr Green, the most jealous of them all._

He strode to the door and knocked more sharply than intended. Alexander looked up from his paperwork and smiled, the type that raised one side of his lips higher than the other.  
“Please, come in Oliver,” he spoke with a charmingly expressive tone.  
Oliver stepped in and closed the door behind him before he opted to stroll towards the brilliant and familiar view his father's office afforded.

“They have given you quite the view,” Oliver remarked thinly, unable to mask his unwarranted unease.  
“Indeed,” Alexander effused, “your City is quite a lovely one.”  
Oliver turned from the windows and strode towards the desk where Alexander sat.  
“Do you visit often?” he asked gripping the top edge of the brushed suede meeting chair.  
Alexander twisted a pen around his long, thick fingers, “I’m afraid not.”

He gestured for Oliver to sit with such quiet control that before Oliver could consider rejecting his offer, he found himself sitting with one ankle balanced on his knee and his hands clasped on his lap.

“So what brings you here this time?” Oliver asked with an impish grin.  
Alexander shifted in his seat, squeaking the leather, in the only display of anything remotely close to rattled as Oliver had so far seen. He leaned forward, forearms on the desk and with one hand cupping the other.  
“The job Mister Queen,” he answered succinctly, not even a blink or a wayward glance, “nothing more, nothing less,” he added before settling his shoulders into the back of his chair.

“And, if you’ll excuse my frankness,” Oliver challenged, “what is it my mother has hired you to do?”  
A glimpsed smile, “I was under the impression you hired me also.”  
“I offer my mother my support,” Oliver retorted promptly, not missing a beat.  
“Well then you would know that QC Europe and Asia are haemorrhaging money,” Alexander relaxed his fingers momentarily before he laced them together, waiting for Oliver's response.

The truth was that Oliver wasn’t aware, but in the interest of saving face he did his best to supress his surprise behind a perfected smile and slightly cocked head.

“Unfortunately,” Alexander continued, “QC America can’t support this indefinitely and you have already taken a fair amount of battle damage.”  
Oliver continued to smile and he even offered a lightly bobbed nod that he understood with absolute clarity, despite the information being almost completely new to him.  
Alexander leaned his broad shoulders closer to the desk and unlinked his fingers to flatten his palms to the glass top, “While the issues stem with these other branches it has uncovered some rot in your foundations, namely how, frankly,” he articulated like a modern day Sherlock Holmes as he looked down at the paperwork in front of him, “it has been run like a frat house’s young enterprises’ scheme to sell wet tee-shirts.”

Oliver chuckled as he uncrossed his leg and anchored it to the floor, “You are quite critical for someone who is hired by said fraternity.”  
A willowy smile crossed over Alexander's lips, “I’m honest Oliver, that’s why people hire me. Your company, your heritage and your inheritance don’t need my kind words and soft encouragement. They need a wake-up call.”  
The sound of an imaginary gavel cracking against its block echoed in Oliver's head before he shifted rigidly in his seat, “And that’s _all_ you’re here to do?”  
Neither of them were going to mention Felicity by name, both unsure what the other knew exactly as they tried to keep their cards close at hand.  
“And perhaps sample your barbecue restaurants, I hear they are quite good,” Alexander chortled.

Oliver stood up and brushed a swift palm down the side of his pants.  
“What I came to offer was my apologies for my abrupt exit earlier, so please accept them.”  
“I’m sure it couldn’t be helped,” Alexander conceded as he too stood and instinctively fastened the middle button on his navy blazer, “I hope the matter was resolved.”

He walked around Oliver and opened the office door courteously.  
“It was,” Oliver smiled as sensations of Felicity's tight body swelling around him quivered down to his base, “quite remarkably.”  
Alexander offered his hand and a smile of his own, “I look forward to working _with_ you Oliver.”  
“And I, you.”  
Oliver took the older man's impressively large hand in his own and while Oliver had often dwarfed many a rickety hand of a business adversary, it was now his turn to be swallowed up by long, broad fingers stretching out from solid but soft palms.

The handshake was brief but firm and even once released Oliver could feel a ghost of it still pressing into his slack hand.

Oliver left the impromptu meeting still harbouring a tense jaw and an unsettling jealousy, irrespective of what Felicity had said. Perhaps on some level he would have been pleased if the debonair Mr Wolfe had thrown down the gauntlet and confessed he was there for Felicity, because then _at least_ he could have felt justified at the insidious emotion. But he hadn't and, even in the face of Oliver's brash remarks, Alexander had remain cool, calm, collected and above all else, professional.

A fact which just made Oliver's jealousy sprout like a weed.

* * *

  
The rest of the working day was spent in solitude as Oliver tried to negate unfamiliar territory. While he’d considered himself protective of those he cared about, Thea for instance, he’d never found himself nursing this sour angst that made him sullen and testy.

Whether it was because he’d never felt threatened by someone else or because he’d never immersed himself in a relationship with someone enough to care, he wasn’t entirely sure. But before he could consider each possibility on its dues, Felicity knocked lightly and floated ethereally into his still office.

“Goodnight Mister Queen,” she spoke with the quiet confidence he had once wondered about, but now admired as she left his door cracked open, “I came to ask whether you wanted your gift returned?”  
A smile plucked up the corners of his lips and creased his eyes, “please keep it.”  
She walked a few echoed footsteps deeper into the room, despite knowing the floor was empty of other workers.  
“Goodnight Oliver,” she breathed and Oliver sighed as his eyes lapped up the soft purr of his name through her full, matt pink lips. He didn’t think there was a possibility he would ever tire of hearing her say it.  
_Or screaming it._

He stood up and walked closer. Barely a foot away from her, his arm grazed down her side secretively.

“Seeing as you won’t be visiting Verdant tonight, did you have other plans?”  
Instinctively his tongue rolled over his own lip, wetting it, as he imagined a million possible answers, each one more lewd than the last.  
“I’m meeting with Alexander,” she answered without pause, _there was that proficient honesty again_.

“He came down while you were away and apologised for the surprise nature of his visit,” she explained as she noted Oliver's surprise. She brushed back loose tendrils of hair before she continued, “The finalisations of this job were last minute. He had tried to call me this morning from the airport, but as you know I didn’t take the call, but he had expected to have more time before seeing me here as he wasn’t aware of my new position.”  
She prattled off the explanation with ease and, honestly, Oliver could find no fault with it.

Felicity owed him no such response and he should have appreciated her forthright honesty, but it was only making his blood simmer while he imagined Alexander's smooth baritone, poetry-reading, vagina-thrumming voice telling Felicity that he had missed her while he used his bedroom eyes and intimate knowledge of Felicity’s body, mind and soul to woo her back into his life and his bed.

He couldn’t let Felicity see, but on the inside Oliver was as green as they came.

“He and I have some catching up to do,” she offered animatedly, hoping her change in demeanour would settle the unrest she could see in Oliver's eyes.  
“Will you sleep with him?”  
The question came out of nowhere and despite knowing he’d asked it, Oliver simply couldn’t believe that he had. It was as though he’d developed a babble that shut off his internal monologue and made him verbalise _everything_.

He watched as Felicity’s back stiffened, she had just given him answers he had no right to know and told him clearly that she was not going to be pulled in this direction but he’d brushed all that aside and asked her the lewdest of questions, that frankly should see her kneeing him in the balls.

“I won’t dignify that with a response Oliver.”  
“What happened to ask the question?”  
He could see the train wreck that was going to be this conversation but it was like he was pulling on the emergency break and nothing was happening.

“Well I guess you asked it, didn’t you,” she replied curtly as she strutted to the door. After pulling it open she turned her head and sighed, “Goodnight Mister Queen.”  
_Oliver_ was replaced by the formalities again.

By the time he’d gotten over himself to apologise she had already left.

* * *

  
**[That Night]**

Felicity idly pushed a helpless roasted potato around the edge of the bone china plate in a fancy restaurant where mood lighting and fine jazz music set a stunning ambience, while the night put on a show of a full moon and a blanket of twinkling stars.

“Shall we just pretend I didn’t notice?” Alexander asked through a smile before he took a sip of the champagne beside him.  
Felicity looked up from her plate and blew out pensive sigh. Wolfe was one of the most observant men she’d come across in her life, hiding anything from him was a fool’s errand.  
“You noticed I suppose?” she asked with a non-committal tone and a gently arched brow.  
“That you and your boss are intimate?” he spoke over the rim of his glass before he set the same down, “Yes, Felicity I noticed. If the ‘fuck’ wasn’t enough to give it away his very unsubtle chat with me later on would have finalised my suspicions.”

Her eyebrows shrugged expressively before she combed her fingers through her hair.  
“You think it’s a mistake?”  
Alexander shook his head softly, “I don’t think you’ve made a mistake in your life Felicity, but every decision comes with repercussions. Does he know you _as you are_?”  
Felicity understood the question, _did Oliver know both Megan and Felicity?_  
“Yes,” she breathed, like a sigh trapped between her rosy lips, “but you’re not surprised about that are you?”  
A benevolent chuckle warmed the air, “No Felicity, dare I say you have somewhat of a type.”  
Felicity matched his laugh with one of her own, “men in well-tailored suits is my kink,” she shrugged playfully.  
He took another sip of champagne as did Felicity, who hummed while the rich fruity elixir bubbled down her throat.  
“I am surprised at your openness with him though,” Alexander added, his husky English accent teaming with his half-lidded eyes.  
“It was complicated,” Felicity remarked, finally stabbing her fork into the rogue potato, “I am sorry to have brought you into it, I wasn’t aware you’d be coming, please know that our history isn’t something I talk about in detail.”

Alexander leaned over the table and laid his hand on top of Felicity’s, “I know,” he comforted warmly, and she didn’t doubt it for a minute.

“Does he know you’re here, with me?” he asked, his expansive hand still swamping hers.  
Felicity nodded with a hitched breath, “He does.”  
Alexander retreated his hand and focused his eyes back on his venison “And?”  
“And what?” she quipped before slipping the roasted potato through her lips.  
“What did he say?”  
She took her time chewing, not because she wanted to savour the taste of the aromatic rosemary with a hint of garlic, but because she could almost guarantee how this discussion was going to go and she needed a moment’s respite from it.

She swallowed and kept her eyes focused on her own meal, “He asked if I was going to sleep with you?”  
“To which you said it was none of his business,” he teased as one brow hitched to his hairline and his lips bent into a smirk.  
“Something like that,” Felicity mumbled.  
Alexander chuckled, avidly amused at the notion, “Are we?”  
“No,” she shrugged one shoulder.  
“So why not just tell him that?”  
Felicity pursed her lips momentarily before they fell open with a sigh.  
“Because I shouldn’t have to,” was the only answer she had.  
Wolfe sighed with a smoky rasp, “There is that storm,” before he feed the fork through his smiling lips.

“A change of topic would be greatly appreciated,” Felicity instructed, her thoughts on Oliver were beginning to addle her brain and while she was certain she absolutely needed time to work through her thoughts, here and now was neither the time nor the place.  
“Who is she?” Felicity asked as she kicked Alexander’s ankle under the table.  
He dropped his head in an attempt to hide his smile while his head rolled back and forth.  
“You know me that well,” he answered as he looked back up, still wearing the smile.  
“We were together for nearly three years Wolfe,” she stated definitively, “as much as you know about me, surely I know the same about you,” she finished with a smile that blanched her cheeks a soft pink.  
“She’s a lawyer from New York, it’s new- _ish_ but she’s amazing,” Felicity watched as his eyes drifted off into a state of rapture.  
“And she knows you?” Felicity repeated the same inferenced question that Alexander had about Oliver.  
“She does, that’s not how we met but it’s something she embraces. When I met her she was having a rather heated argument with a broker over some real estate holdings I have upstate,” Wolfe took a drink to wet his lips, “she’s about your build but she could hold her own with a man twice her age without batting an eyelid.”  
“Dare I say you have somewhat of a type too,” Felicity joshed as her eyes drifted towards the door of the restaurant  
She heard Alexander as he continued to speak, but her eyes were now at the door, “Her name is …”

“Oh no,” Felicity gaped as the faces of the latest customers became visible in front of the maître d'.  
Oliver was there – with his mother.


	9. The Hedonistic Fixation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to Bish and her Bae.

Felicity could feel her heart rate rising and she was almost certain her face had flushed an indecently scarlet colour already as she tight-roped between a feeling of dread and blood-boiling rage. Neither emotion was particularly proactive nor did it help that when she glanced across the table at Alexander, he didn’t look either of those things.

While she admired his calm and cool demeanour 95.6% of the time, there had been occasions in both their relationship and their friendship where she had wished for a little loss of control – least of all to make her tempestuous nature not feel so out of place. Tonight was now one of those occasions.

“Alexander,” Moira effused as the waiter walked her and Oliver by the table. Felicity kept her chin pressed to her chest in some irrational hope that perhaps she would go unnoticed, “Felicity?” Moira added, the surprise in her tone quite apparent.

_Hope destroyed._

Felicity offered only Moira a placating smile, knowing that right at that moment if she was forced to look at Oliver he would get something that more resembled a glare and Moira Queen, Felicity surmised, didn’t need her son and his secretary to showcase any more weird behaviour in front of her right now.

Moira must have heard the surprise in her own voice because she quickly composed herself and turned her lips up into a soft and perfectly-prim smile.  
“My apologies for my surprise,” she remarked as she looked between Felicity and Alexander before she tipped her head back towards Oliver where her smile straightened as if to question whether he knew this would happen.

“It’s quite alright Moira,” Wolfe said coolly with an even smile, “Felicity and I have remained friends after I finished my contract with her old company. I don’t have many contacts in Starling so at my plea she kindly offered to join me for dinner where I could perhaps get a feel for the lay of Queen Consolidated’s land.”  
Moira nodded along as though she understood.  
“I trust this isn’t an issue for either of you?”  
“Oh no, of course not,” Moira soothed, although the way she practically hopped from one foot to the other alluded to how awkward she felt, “who you keep as friends is entirely your business Alexander.”

Alexander nodded with an appreciative smile. There was so much unspoken in the exchange but the inference was clear – _he would see who he wished for whatever reason he wished and she wouldn’t speak on the matter as though it was idle gossip._

“Perhaps we could mix business with pleasure,” Oliver finally spoke up and Felicity could have kicked him if she thought her foot might reach that far undetected, but he had – probably purposefully – situated himself on the opposite side to where Felicity sat. Oliver’s attention stayed on Alexander with a smile that wasn’t genuine, “and you could tell us your preliminary thoughts on QC,” his eyes left off Alexander and started towards the waiter who had been wordlessly been standing back from the exchange, “I’m sure the restaurant wouldn't mind …”  
Felicity clenched her teeth, _Oh he was not going to suggest._  
Oliver continued with his eyes blinking only the once towards Felicity, “Pushing two…”

“Oliver,” Moira interrupted as she discretely pinched the inside of his forearm like he was 8 and being a little shit – _the latter was probably true at that moment_ , “we won’t be intruding on Mr Wolfe’s recreational time.”

“Perhaps Oliver, if you are still so inclined after I’ve finished dinner with _Ms Smoak_ ,” he rolled his lips smoothly over her name entirely on purpose and Felicity had to pinch the inside of her lower lip closed with her teeth to stop herself from cheering because Alexander rarely called her that and on this occasion it was definitely used to ruffle Oliver, which it did, “I’d be glad for us to meet at the bar and discuss this further over a whiskey.”

“Nonsense,” Moira answered for Oliver before he could make sounds in this throat, “Oliver doesn’t need that. I’m sure our boardroom meetings will be plenty for him and the rest of us to understand what _needs_ to be done.”  
There was a certain inflection in her tone that suggested, while she might not understand the complexities of what was going on here, she would not have her company clawback derailed because her son had some sort of greenish-tinged glasses on.  
  
She turned to Felicity and offered her a smile that said very little, but was kind enough, “Enjoy your dinner Ms Smoak.”  
Felicity replied with a smile in keeping with Moira’s, “Thank you Mrs Queen.”

* * *

  
From his vantage point where he could clearly see the side of her face, Oliver noted that Felicity was angry. They may have been sitting at least twenty paces away from each other, but he was close enough to read the frustration on her face.

 _He’d fucked up, again._  
His decision, once he’d heard that Mr Wolfe had booked a table for two at La Vivanda, to come here had been an impetuous and impulsive one and if he had taken but a few moments to consider the likely outcome – exactly what it was now – he would have thought better of it.

_But…here he was, acting the fool._

 

* * *

 

“You were saying?” Felicity asked, unintentionally sharp as she impaled a ravioli with her fork.  
Alexander smiled, taking a sip of wine before he chuckled lightly to himself, “We’re not going to talk about that?”  
“What is there to talk about? I made a mistake thinking him mature enough to handle our arrangement.”  
She fed the ravioli through her lips and chewed sombrely.  
  
Felicity avoided making eye contact with Wolfe for as long as she could, but when she finally relented to the pull, she found him looking at her with a slightly raised brow  
“So that’s it then?”  
_She didn’t want it to be._

“Does …,” Felicity paused as she tried to recall whether Alexander had mentioned the name of the woman he was seeing.  
“Ash,” he offered, reading her mind.  
“Does Ash know that we’re friends despite our history?”  
He took a considered sip of his Moet, “Of course.”  
“And is she okay with it?”  
Felicity expected she knew the answer already because Alexander Wolfe was not a man who would entertain ultimatums, nor was he a man that hid his past from those he pulled close.

“I didn’t exactly insinuate that I would be sleeping with you,” he jested, “so yes, she is okay with our continued friendship and she’s actually looking forward to meeting you.”  
“Firstly, I would love to meet her, she must be quite something to catch both your attention and your heart,” Felicity cheered with a smile that plumped her rouged cheeks, “secondly, I didn’t insinuate that to Oliver.”  
She folded her hands across her lap, crooked her head to the side and pouted.

“He asked and you told him it was none of his business,” Wolfe reminded as his knife slid through the Black Angus Steak.  
Felicity speared another ravioli, “Which it’s not.”  
“I agree,” he nodded calmly, “especially given the parameters you have set, where your private lives remain just that.”  
“But?”  
She knew one was coming.  
“But any hot-blooded man in love is bound to have taken that as confirmation.”  
Felicity laughed, rasped and amused, “He’s not in love with me.”  
Alexander said nothing as he slipped the mid-rare meat strip into his mouth and chewed while a smile broke across his lips.

Sixty tedious seconds later, he swallowed and said, “really? He could have fooled me.”

* * *

  
It was twenty minutes of idle conversation later when Felicity excused herself and headed towards the bathroom. Oliver, after offering some half-assed excused, left his table moments later and caught up with her down the narrow corridor lined in luxuriantly richly cream walls.

“I’m not good at this and I fucked up,” he admitted, brazenly clasping her arm above the elbow.  
She pulled him in the single bathroom and locked the door.  
“You followed me?” she asked pointedly, her heel tapping out and impatient tune as she walked across the vintage-tiled floor before leaning her hip against the mushroom-pink wall.

“No, not exactly,” his eyes were soaking in the fleur de lis embossed on every second tile, “Raisa mentioned she booked a table for two on behalf of Alexander here tonight.”  
Felicity rubbed a frustrated tongue between her pursed lips, “and I told you I was going out with him,” she quipped, finishing the realisation with an annoyed sigh.

Oliver stepped a single pace closer but Felicity retreated into her space with her arms folded across her chest, closing off her body.  
“I just wanted to apologise,” he breathed, echoes of regret and anguish painted each word as he sunk his hands into his pockets to still his desire to smooth them down her tensed arms.  
“Really?” she scoffed as her eyes briefly rolled to the ceiling, “Because most people don’t apologise by making the _entire_ situation worse.”  
She pushed off the wall and walked to the opposite side of the small bathroom.

“How do you think this looks to your mother Oliver, do you really think she’s not the least bit interested in how Wolfe and I could _possibly_ run in the same circles?” Felicity spoke with a cynical tone while her finger absently traced the bevelled edge of the marble vanity.  
In another circumstance she would have liked the feeling of the hard, cold surface against her warm, pliable skin, but her mood left no room for such indulgent thoughts.

Oliver’s eyelids hung heavy with regret, his intention in bringing Moira had simply being a cover, he hadn’t thought beyond that, “She’s not going to say anything, I’m sure.”

He could see her eyes as they were veiled in a glassy reflection, “You don’t get it do you?” she sighed as her arms snaked back around the waist of her simple black dress, “You’re fine with people talking about your business and having your name and picture flashed across the papers, hell,” she huffed, shrugging her shoulders up to the ceiling, “maybe you even enjoy it just a little bit Oliver, but we are not all like that. I am not like that.”  
Her eyes, while glassy, were honed and focused like lasers on him when she spoke the last sentence and there was not a word Oliver could – or _should_ – say to counter it.

She walked a little further around the vanity until they stood face to face, “I told you that I kept my mask on because I’m a nobody and I _like_ being a nobody,” she repeated with an undercurrent of resolution in her tone, “You could sleep with an entire football cheer squad and people would call you a legend. I enjoy intimacies with one man that I don’t know and I’m a slut. That is how the world works, and you just invited it into mine.”

Oliver inhaled her words and while he wanted to argue them, he was not so naïve as to not believe what she said wasn’t indisputably accurate.  
  
She rolled her scarlet lips before piercing her tongue between them, “You think your mother isn’t going to look at me different now? She isn’t going to wonder what an earth a lowly IT girl is doing with a man who is old enough to be her father and that looks like he does?” she paused, watching as the realisation sunk deeper into Oliver, they were things he had never considered but ones Felicity had always banked on, “You don’t think that she might question who bought my shoes or why I’ve done my hair a certain way. Good person or not, she will wonder Oliver and she will come to the same conclusion that people always do, because it can’t _possibly_ be just exactly what it fucking is. No, they’ll say he’s my sugar daddy, I’m his pet and I opened my legs to get a job, hell they might even think I’m doing it now to you, because god forbid I actually have a brain and the tenacity to use it.”

“She won’t think that, if anything she thinks you’re too good for me,” Oliver offered, it was breadcrumbs compared to what Felicity was clearly worried about, but it was all he had.  
“But that’s part of the problem Oliver,” she replied, blowing out a languid sigh, “I don’t want people to think about me _at all._ I like my life, my simple, compartmentalised life where I just do my job and my successes aren’t judged on the length of my skirt or what I choose to take pleasure from.”

His head rocked slowly side to side as his eyes dropped once more to his feet, “I didn’t consider that.”  
“No,” a soft popped sound, “you wouldn’t because you don’t take anything seriously, but I do. I didn’t go to MIT and graduate with honours to be your secretary Oliver, I have goals and aspirations that I will fight to attain.”

She ran a tired hand through the ends of her hair while her eyes successfully held her tears at bay, “You will one day inherit this company along with your sister but if you keep living in this fantasy that the world revolves around you, you will run it into the ground and there will be nothing anyone can do to salvage it.”

She took the short walk to the door with sharp footsteps, pausing as she reached for the lock.  
“So that’s it, this is over?” Oliver inquired, deep regret hung from the tail of each word.  
_He’d fucked up._  
She tapped the lock thoughtfully, “I don’t know,” was all she could say.  
Oliver took as hand from his pocket and let it drift above her skin until it reached the slope of her shoulder, “I want to be with you Felicity,” he whispered, as just the pads of his fingers fell over the edge of her shoulder.

Her chin dropped as she unlocked the door and, without turning towards him, she answered his plea with a softly spoken request, “I need some time.”

 

* * *

 

 **[Ten Days Later : Friday, 14 March 2014]**  
**[5:30pm]**

 _They were on a break._  
Oliver knew he had gone longer without sex and survived quite well in the past, but watching her outside his office every day for the last week had been like tying a noose around his cock and brutally tightening it bit by bit.

He tried to look at her as _just Felicity_ – like he had for months before he knew any different – but he couldn’t, not even for a day, because every time her tongue flirted with her lips he imagined her between his legs, rolling it over the tip. And every time she crossed her legs he wondered if she might be holding onto his _friend_ while he drooled at the recall of the sensations he felt when he filled her. Whenever she came back from lunch a little pink across the cheeks from the wind he imagined that same flush that danced down her body as his tongue explored her sex.

His endeavour to think of her only as his charming, quiet little EA who might recoil in horror at knowing his fetishes, had failed quite spectacularly and he had found himself grasping and tugging himself with images of her playing in his mind.

But he was doing the only sensible thing he knew how – he was giving her what she asked for – _space_.

Today was the closest they had been in a while. The boardroom now resembled a classroom without the desks as the head of departments and their assistants filled the lightly cooled room.

He could smell the aroma of her perfume and the subtle hints of her shampoo when her long, straightened hair draped over her shoulder.

His eyes, despite his best efforts, wandered down her to knees.  
They looked smooth and he would give anything to run the tips of his fingers over them as he wondered what she was thinking.

Felicity was horny.  
She had an impressive vocabulary so she should have been able to think of a better word than that but her head was so foggy that the only thing she could _clearly_ think about was lifting her skirt up, pulling her panties to the side and asking Oliver to fuck her; right there and then.

Even his fingers would do – those long, thick fingers, twisting and thrusting inside her as they scraped against her cushioned walls, feeling the contrasts between the smooth and the rippled, moving slowly and decisively before he would up the ante into rapid, uneven thrusts, until she finished on his fingers after which he would put them to his mouth and lick them clean with everyone watching.

 _Or_ , he could take it and spread her satiny spend down his long hard length and take her from behind, stretching her puckered hole as she sat down onto his lap. The pinch of him filling her would make her rasp his name while he reached around and teased a second orgasm from her.

So vivid was Felicity’s desire that she could feel her body heating up at the mere thought of it. She closed her legs tightly, her clit so swollen that she silently hissed at the feeling of crushing it between her thighs. She had to focus.

Oliver took a long breath in through his nose and took in the subtle hints of something heady and sweet. His tongue patted his lower lip as the scent of her swarmed his sense. Perhaps he was imagining it, and the aromatic scent of that first dewy-fresh arousal pooling between her shapely legs was nothing more than a figment of his imagination – _but what if it wasn’t?_

He snuck a look to his left and caught the way her eyes danced up towards her eyelids for only a moment before they fell down to the device she was busy taking notes on. She shifted a little in her seat, uncrossing her legs for only a few seconds before the one slipped over the other and her nude patent shoe pointed at him.

His eyes walked up the soft ridges of her foot as she swung it softly from the ankle, before he shadowed the smile working across his lips with his hand as he thought about the times they’d fucked with her shoes still on.

He pushed his thighs closer together as he thought about the desire he had been harbouring to have Felicity, decked out in _mistress_ leather, press one of those ice-pick heels into the fleshy rounds of his ass while he lay at her feet, fully submissive to her.

He swallowed down his thoughts as he pinched his brow into focus. What Felicity had said at the restaurant hadn’t been far from the truth – while Oliver cared for the wellbeing of this company, more often than not, he flew by the seat of his pants and on the good graces of his family name.

The idea that she thought him smart enough to do better – and not just a general write off without hope for redemption – had, days later, made him realise that he didn’t always need to prove people’s low expectations right.

Including taking something from this meeting – other than what perfume Felicity’s was wearing of course.

He tuned back in and tried to narrow his focus on the one man he’d really prefer not to have to listen to today – Alexander Wolfe, the _British Gentleman!Daddy._

“Unfortunately many companies are run on silver-spoon management,” Alexander continued, his mannerisms were sleek – a half smile, a slight raise of a brow, a casual stance that said, _my suit is threaded with gold and I have a net worth likely to be greater than yours, but I’m your friend – trust me …_ Or at least that’s what Oliver heard.

Felicity’s blunt remark about how starting a turf war with Wolfe would see Oliver lose – probably spectacularly – likely wasn’t too far from the truth. Since Felicity asked for space, Oliver had done his best to try and find some chink in the “better” man’s armour, but, as of yet, he’d found none. He was a self-made billionaire, he had successes in almost every avenue of business, he counted some of the most influential people in the business world stateside and overseas as his friends, he had foot holdings in virtually every country, he was respected and – even harder to accomplish in the business world – he was _liked_.

Oliver couldn’t find a single grievance or trail of any sort of misdemeanour – granted, Oliver wasn’t exactly “techie” and his “source” was simply Google, but there was almost _nothing_ bar a few, clearly jealous gripes about him not pandering to some bleeding heart CEOs and a few girls that had been shocked that he had no interest in sleeping with them.

 _He was a fucking Saint with the sexual indulgences of a Sinner._  
And now he was talking about ‘silver-spoon management’, in other words, Oliver.  
  
“Queen Consolidated has, in areas, fallen under this ideology,” he continued, clicking a button to rollover to the next slide, a graph which sought to show the decline in profits as the company had a generational shift in management – in layman’s terms, as those in management got younger, the profits went down. Noticeably, the few years _after_ the applied sciences department had been vested to Oliver.

“We give departments to those who aren’t suited for the job for any multitude of reasons and when companies flourish no one notices, but when cracks develop in the fundamentals of a company it’s these structures that are the first to go.”

Oliver gritted his teeth as his entire body became rigid in his seat. He heard a few soft murmurs from the rows behind and Oliver resisted the urge to scowl behind him at where they originated from, because it was abundantly clear in Oliver’s mind that this was directed squarely at him and that wasn’t lost on others in the room.

The talented and suave Mr Wolfe was throwing Oliver to the curb with the trash collection.

“A company that does this,” he paused as another slide much like the first clicked through, “does not play to its strengths. You overlook a candidate who is ideal because you become focused on the face rather than the function of the role.”

Oliver grimaced and sunk a little deeper into his seat as he watched his mother attentively nod along with everything Alexander said.  
_But he wasn’t done yet._  
“That’s not to say all those who have been privileged to come under this umbrella can’t succeed, of course they can, just like any other person,” an engaged smile and a light chuckle did very little to lift Oliver’s stoic mood, “but only if they have the drive, the motivation and the desire to.”

_That sure as hell felt like three sharp slaps across Oliver’s face._

“The saying about teaching a man to fish being far more valuable than just giving him a fish is equally as valid a concept in the business world. Teaching a person _how_ to run a company is inherently more valuable than simply handing them one and saying ‘good luck, make something of this’.”

A shift of Oliver’s eyes to the left caught Felicity looking at him for only a moment until her eyes returned to the notes on her lap. Virtually this entire lecture had been about Oliver’s undeserved acquisition of the Applied Sciences division and he didn’t have an argument to fight back with.

“My mission here is to show you what works and what doesn’t,” Oliver felt the quick glance of Alexander’s eyes on him, or maybe he imagined it, “I suspect some of you will hate me by the end of this, but I’m not here to pat you on the back for what you have done, I’m here to grow this company.”

There was a chorus of _oohs_ and _ahhs_ and a lot of nodding along with Wolfe as he shot the room a million dollar smile and a piercing blue gaze that you could take to the bank.

“In the end my words are only suggestions to be taken or rejected as the board decides, but QC does have the solidarity to ride out this climate, to even grow in it and to become a name that lights up a whole plethora of buildings.”

An eruption of applause started with Moira and Oliver begrudgingly slapped his hands together in suit.

This time he didn’t imagine it when Alexander locked eyes with him before he spoke, “I hope you will all work _with_ me on this.”  
_That was undoubtedly meant for Oliver_.

 

* * *

 

“I couldn’t help but feel that a lot of the latter part of your sell was directed at me,” Oliver said bluntly once the room had cleared and while Alexander gathered his things.  
“Well,” a controlled breath in through the nose and out through slightly-parted lips, “I suppose it was Oliver.”

Oliver pursed his lips and bobbed his head – at least he didn’t have to argue that point, even though he’d spent the last ten minutes waiting for the room to clear deciding on what he might say if Alexander refuted his hypothesis.  
“You don’t think I deserve my job here?” the younger man quipped as he loosened his shoulders into a rounded shrug.  
Alexander cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders, “I think you have been given an opportunity you could either rise to or squander.”

A sardonic chuckle left Oliver’s lips before he too straightened his shoulders, “Funny, Felicity said the same thing.”  
“She’s a smart girl,” Wolfe replied almost instantaneously.  
Neither man blinked away.  
“She is.”

A silence hung over them for a few static moments before Wolfe collected his compendium and relaxed into a casual stance, one Oliver didn’t adopt.

“Is there something else you wanted to say?” the older man asked as he brushed a reflective thumb across his bristled jaw.  
Oliver swallowed the heavy lump that had formed in the back of his throat, “I’ll fight for her.”

Alexander smiled, much to Oliver’s surprise, and bobbed his head in a soft, but measured, nod.  
“I should hope so, she is worth fighting for.”  
Oliver shifted from the heel of his foot to the ball and back again, before he observed coolly, “So you do want her back?”

“Let’s say I did,” Wolfe sighed, pandering for only a moment to Oliver’s accusation framed as a question, “Do you think engaging in this war of words with you would help me any? You and I both know how little Felicity cares for that level of dick measuring.”  
Oliver opened his mouth to retort but he closed it up when he realised he had none.

“I _can_ assure you Mr Queen that _if_ I was trying to find a way back into her bed or get her into mine I would hardly be wasting my time talking to you,” he shifted the compendium up under his other arm before he started to walk away.

Pausing at the door, Alexander turned back towards Oliver with a muted expression, “I would try putting my tongue to far better use.”

A brief smile and the older man was gone.

* * *

  
**[6:10pm]**

“I need to see her,” Tommy whined as he followed Felicity across the open plan lobby just outside Oliver’s office “she has cast a spell on me.”  
His melodramatics made Felicity smile, though she tried her best to pin it down.  
“I’m sure she has,” Felicity shrugged as she cracked the lid of a bottle and topped up the water level on the flowers.

Tommy slumped down onto the modern Scandinavian couch and fell to one side before his feet lifted off the ground and came down with a huff onto the smooth leather cushion.  
“I think I’m in love,” he groaned as he nestled his head into the cylindrical pillow near the arm, as though this was a therapy couch.

“I highly doubt that Mister Merlyn,” Felicity abridged while she fed her glasses further up her nose.  
“That is cruel Felicity, knowing full well what you calling me that does to me while I’m here baring my soul to you.”  
She laughed at his dramatic overture before she handed him the opened bottle of water which he accepted with a smile.  
“So, the two of you...” he hummed, hiding a smile behind his casual tone, “…you are or were a thing.”  
“I’m not sure what you’re inferring,” she shrugged as she absently shuffled magazines across the glass coffee table.  
“I’m very good with secrets Felicity,” he winked when she finally looked up from her menial task.

She might have argued with him if she didn’t know full well that Thomas Merlyn was the brains behind _Verdant_. She felt at odds with knowing that about him when he knew _so very little_ about her, but Tommy didn’t exactly _hide_ his affiliation and so Felicity reasoned that he was probably quite comfortable with people knowing – at least in part – his ‘secrets’.

“Are you still together?”  
The question didn’t take her off guard and normally she would have answered quite aloofly, leaving the asker to come to whatever conclusion they wanted to, but today she answered without any of her usual walls, with a simple, “No.”

Tommy sat up as a sparkle took up in his eyes and his brows raised to the ceiling.  
“So you were once?”  
He licked his lips as he asked the question and perhaps on anyone else such a reactive response might have seemed seedy and nearing grotesque, but on Tommy with his boyish charm, it was almost endearing.

“Yes, once,” Felicity answered, watching his eyes as fireworks lit up inside them.  
“Are you?” he cocked his head to the side and left only one brow raised.  
“No, Emilia was an exception to my usual rule.”

The smile stayed on his lips as he sucked back a few gulps of the natural spring water before he swiped the back of his hand across his wet mouth.  
“You surprise me Felicity,” he said with a hint of admiration.

 _If only you knew_ the smile on her lips played with the response she never spoke.

“I’m serious about wanting to see her again though,” Tommy annexed with a restless sigh, “I haven’t been able to get her off my mind.”  
“She has that effect,” Felicity replied as she remembered the moment she was drawn to the burlesque dancer with curls of silky dark tresses and eyes that walked around the room like a lure.

“Just tell me if she’s back in Starling?” Tommy pleaded with his eyes as wide as saucers.  
Felicity sighed as she furrowed her brows.  
“Okay,” he pressed his palms into the air in surrender, “I get it, it’s not your place to tell me.”

Lolling back into the puffy seat cushion, Tommy closed his eyes dejectedly and folded his lips over his many thoughts until one made his eyes spring open again.

“The Children’s Hospital Masquerade Ball tomorrow night,” he announced as he sat bolt upright, “I’ll be there.”  
Felicity chuckled lightly at his expressive and rapid eye blinking, “as will most of the finer members of Starling.”

“I’ll have a ticket waiting for her at the door,” he stood up and dragged a hand through his mop of dark hair, “if she’s interested in a rake like me, she should come.”  
“Like a modern take on Cinderella?” Felicity teased.  
Tommy laughed cheerfully, “one that shows on cable I hope.”

“Tommy, I can’t do dinner tonight,” Oliver announced as he strode into the small lobby area, his expression darkened and his eyes shadowed with intensity.  
“Uhh, okay,” Tommy quipped as he kicked his feet across the floor.  
“Sorry you made the trip across town.”  
Every part of Oliver looked tense and both Tommy and Felicity noticed it.  
“That’s okay, maybe I’ll go appear at dear old dad’s office and give him a good old fright,” Tommy remarked before he turned to Felicity, “if there is a way you can tell her.”  
Felicity nodded softly, “I’ll see what I can do.”

A smile overtook Tommy’s face and he thanked her with an endearing thumbs up before he sidled past Oliver.

“Rain check then?” he asked as Oliver’s eyes followed his friend towards the corridor.  
“I’ll call you.”  
Tommy tipped an imaginary hat before he walked with a skip in his step down the corridor and out of sight.

Felicity looked at Oliver with curious eyes as she tried her best to read his vague expression. Oliver smiled only for a split second before the deepness returned to his full lips and the corners pulled taut in towards his jaw.

It wasn’t anger.  
It wasn’t sadness.  
It was something different, _resolute_?

“Felicity,” Oliver spoke her name like it hitched in his throat as he paused outside his office door, “my office please.”  
He didn’t wait for an answer before he stepped just inside his spacious office and held the door open. Felicity offered no argument and walked wordlessly around the couch and through the threshold into his domain.

He closed the door behind him and Felicity smiled expectantly to herself when she heard the distinctively low _clunk_ of the lock. He flicked the switch on the embossed wall beside the door and neither of them moved until the glass wall that ran alongside the corridor went completely opaque.

“Another apology?” Felicity finally broke the silence as she clipped the breadth of his office, walking without purpose, but afraid to linger in the same spot.  
She stopped a few paces from the large windows and wrapped her slender arms around her waist as she watched a helicopter roving above a building in the distance.

She felt the gentle breeze brush across her neck as Oliver walked in close behind her  
“Would another be enough?” his voice was whispered and his warm breath misted across the back of her neck, making goose bumps rise in its wake while the tips of his fingers teased the tips of her hair.

Felicity’s eyes lulled closed as her ears drunk in the sounds of him. Her lips pursed together, stifling the soft moan that was desperate to escape her lips. Her nipples hardened under the soft silk fabric of her bra as her nether lips thrummed with desire.

“Oliver,” she breathed his name as her head tipped back, grazing her cheek against his bristled jaw.  
“Would you have me beg?” he asked, without a hint of a cynical tone.  
The crown of her head lay against his shoulder while her hand sought out his at his side. Her slender fingers danced, tip to tip, with his before they entwined.

He squeezed her hand tightly, balling it up in his and making Felicity release a hiss over her lusciously-glossed lips.  
His lips brushed against her lobe while his tongue teased the silver drop earring, “I would beg,” he whispered before he blew a deliciously hot breath down the soft slope of her jaw.

She mewled softly while her body pressed in against the growing rod at the small of her back. She wet her lips deliberately slow as she imagined him stooping to feed his cock between the rounds of her ass while his fingers felt the way between her folds. She imagined a sudden surge forward as he thrust himself into her sex while his arms banded around her to keep her body from pulling away.

She would take every inch willingly, suppressing her need to scream by burying her mouth into his neck, while she focused every thought into tightening her walls around him.

Her breathing quickened as the apples of her cheeks and the crest of her shoulders pinked up.

“But,” he guided their linked hands around the front of her body, grazing his knuckles over her sex, “I would rather put my tongue to better use.”  
He kissed the translucent skin at the base of her neck while his nose skimmed around her hairline, breathing in the enchanting notes of her coconut shampoo. He was desperately afraid she would pull away from his advances and he would have to let her go despite the aching to do so _much more_. But she didn’t, if anything Felicity pressed her body closer to his.

“And what is that good use?” Felicity asked, her voice a delicate whisper that could have been mistaken for a singing breeze.  
He turned her in his arms, twisting her arm behind her back as her hand stayed clasped in his.  
“Between your legs,” he admitted roughly, his eyes a dangerously deep blue that didn’t care who might find them there, like that.

He dropped her hand but Felicity kept it there while Oliver lowered himself to his knees. His hands cupped her ass as he pressed his face into the tightly woven fabric of her dress at the summit of her thighs. He breathed in deeply, making a salacious sound at the back of his throat, almost like a growl, as the sweetness of her heady scent radiated from her and through the tiny weave of her dress.  
“I can smell you Felicity,” he growled, each word making his face press deeper, “let me taste you.”

Felicity gently combed her nails across his scalp before she grabbed a fistful at the crown and yanked his head back, forcing his eyes to meet with hers. His eyes glazed over as a rush of pain spread down from his the centre of his head.

“Say ‘Please Mistress’,” she smiled wickedly while her index finger twisted in the roots of his hair, intensifying the sharp pain radiating down from there.  
The pain made Oliver’s smile widen and his eyes shadowed over with carnality as his tongue patted his lower lip in expectation.  
“Please Mistress,” he rasped, the growl starting low in his belly.  
She loosened the grip her fingers had on his hair and lightly soothed the aching roots with the heel of her palm before her eyes stalked around the room.

His executive chair – while she relished the feeling of the soft, malleable textile against her naked skin, the wheels on it always made things a little more difficult than they needed to be by either having it hard up against an unmovable object or requiring one of them to hold onto the same; and knowing how valuable Oliver’s hands were, Felicity decided against that option.

The meeting chairs where she often sat wouldn’t move and while they weren’t leather, the slight roughness of the cotton-twill blend was actually quite an erotic sensation on her thighs as it _almost_ felt like an bonus to the friction Oliver’s groomed beard so deliciously gave her; but the arms were high and the seats themselves were reasonably narrow and short meaning that perching herself on the edge of it to allow Oliver access would have her sitting rather awkwardly and her hands wouldn't really be free to tease him – or _herself_.

While she could stay standing and shimmy the skirt of her dress up around her waist, she really wasn’t in the mood for balancing today. Her eyes landed on the couch a few feet behind and a smile tugged up one side of her lips as she considered the option.

“Stand up,” she ordered and Oliver complied, instantly snapping to his feet.  
She gently ran her fingers down the centre of his baby blue tie before she twisted the end of it into her fist and tugged him backwards as she stepped towards the couch.

Oliver’s eyes blinked a rush of pleasure as his body – although much larger than hers – became a slave to her movements.

“Did you understand what I said at the restaurant?” she asked briskly as she hooked her index finger between his throat and the knot on his tie, yanking his face so close to hers that her tempered breath misted his parted lips.  
“Yes,” he sighed, pushing his lips out a fraction just to graze hers.  
“Yes, what?” she smirked while she twisted her finger around the knot, tightening the noose.  
“Yes Mistress Smoak.”  
Felicity smiled impishly.  
“It can’t happen again,” she warned before she snapped his bottom lip between her teeth. She held him there for only a few seconds as Oliver drunk in the sensation that made his cock pulse beneath its sheath.

Her hand dropped from his tie at the same time her teeth dropped his lip and Oliver sighed at their sudden departure.  
“It won’t,” he assured her before her thumb smoothed over the red indent she left on the inside of his lip.

She smiled in approval before her willowy fingers moved deftly down the placket of his shirt, opening it to her ravenous touch.

“Lie on the couch,” she instructed as the dim lamp beside it illuminated the smooth, soft cushions.  
Oliver obeyed and the width of the couch easily accommodated his wide shoulders with a little room to spare but the length wasn’t so obliging and he planted one foot on the floor to allow the other to angle enough to fit comfortably without tenting his knees.

Felicity drew a line with her middle finger down the centre of his body with the angled to make the nail scuff his skin. Oliver hissed when she slid to the side and caught the tip of his nipple between two nails.

“You’re not going to fuck me tonight Oliver,” she said coyly as she gently twisted his skin, “do you understand that?”  
“Yes,” his answer was ragged and thin.  
“I want you to ache, to feel your body throbbing and desperate for release,” her hand ran over his suit pants and cupped his prominent erection, making Oliver’s ass rise off the couch reactively pushing her hand deeper between his thighs. She kneaded his package with the heel of her hand and the tips of her nails, “unless…”

Oliver’s eyes shot up to hers, widely waiting for her demands.  
“Unless?”  
Felicity smiled and licked her lips as she leaned down towards his ear.  
“Just unless,” she whispered before pulling back from him.

She watched the groan roll down his entire body as she lifted the skirt of her dress and hooked her thumbs over the waistband of her panties. Wordlessly she dragged them down her thighs and let them drop from her knees before she stepped out from their puddle.

Still without speaking, Felicity straddled Oliver across the chest, guiding their bodies until her knees were near his ears, his shoulders rested over her calves and her feet were twisted slightly so that the heel of her shoes gently poked his ribs.

She plumped and shifted the pillow under his head down a little to raise his head up before she lifted off his chest and passed her sex just over his mouth.

Oliver inhaled deeply and hummed loudly as the scent of her engulfed him. His tongue shot from between his lips and tickled her mound before Felicity tipped her hips down towards him.

He didn’t waste any time, slicing her folds with his tongue as his hands slid up under her skirt, hooking the bunched fabric up with his thumbs, and clung to the rounds of her ass.

The stride of his tongue was long and fluid up the length of her slit before he twisted the tip in slow, even circles around her tightening nub. Felicity’s head dropped back as she closed her eyes tightly to focus on each stroke he made. Her body was already well prepared by her imagination in the boardroom so when Oliver tugged her simmering clit with a soft suck she gasped and jerked her head forward before slapping her palms onto the arm of the couch which caused Oliver to grin against her folds.

After closing his lips around her swelling sex, Oliver relinquished the suction and returned to the sweeping licks with the flat of his tongue before teasing her clit side to side. The sudden changes in routine never gave Felicity a moment to relax into it and tonight that kind of spontaneous, disorderly behaviour was precisely what her body craved.

She peeled one of her hands from the arm of the couch, leaving the other to pucker the fabric under her grasped nails. Slowly she preened her fingers through his hair, alternating between light scratches from her purple-tipped nails and gentle circles with the pads of her fingers, rewarding Oliver with his own mix of sensations.

As his tongue worked deeper between her wet folds, his beard created delirious friction along the apex of her thighs.  
“Fuck,” she moaned as her fingers tightened their grip and her palm sunk into his slightly damp forehead, “Good, Oli-“ he sucked her hard, stealing her breath, “vurr,” she finished with a purr.

The heels of her shoes dug a little tighter into Oliver's ribs and his eyes widened with the sudden explosion of pleasure down his body.  
“Do you like that?” she rasped as she bucked her hips forward and caught him with her heel tips again.  
His eyes were wide and wild as he nodded his head feverishly.  
_Liked it? He FUCKING loved it._

Her heel pokes proved to be like spurs to him and his tongue strokes quickened while his lips buried kisses against her wet folds. He welcomed her juices with a fervour of laps and sucks as her wetness coated his mouth and danced the flavours of decadently sweetened cream over his taste buds.

His hands moved to her waist and began to control her thrusts as his tongue devoured every inch of her. For only a moment Felicity let her eyes fall out the window as the city lights bedazzled the night sky. Oliver’s face was mostly bathed in shadows and the warm glow of the lamp a few feet away, but his eyes danced curiously with stars of his own as he continued to ride her sex against his face.

A smile weaved across her pink and pouted lips as she slipped a hand down her dress and nimbly sought out her hardened nipple. Oliver watched, enamoured, as she rubbed two fingers in circles under her tight bodice, teasing her own nipple as silent and pleasured moans dropped from her lips. He could see the hedonism scroll across her face in the way a dewy pink glow illuminated under the apples of her cheeks and in the way the billboard lights caught the dusting of sweat glistening across her brow.

He buried himself deeper, holding her firmer against his face until all he could taste was Felicity and all he could breathe was her too. His breath grew short as his tongue wildly stroked her before seeking out her dripping entrance.

His grip tightened on her and Felicity keened under the weight of his thick, heavy fingers burrowing into her fleshy thighs as he held her, anchored to his face. She could feel his gasped hot air between her folds and she watched as his eyes fly up and down her body, taking every inch of her in.

She started to pull away but Oliver craved to feel the rush of breathing only her so he held her there even when her eyes plummeted to his with concern threaded through them, but his eyes returned only a look of pleasure as he continued his vice like grip.

He could happily die like that.  
_Fuck he wanted to die like this._

Sucking her deeper into his mouth, Oliver wasn’t even sure anymore what part of her his lips were caressing, but it didn’t matter, he would gladly have any and all. He could feel her whole body shuddering above him, rolling towards an orgasm that inflamed the fire in her belly. Every thought turned there. Every nerve focused there. Everything became that.

He found her entrance and skirted it for only a moment as a finger snuck down the valley of her rear and toyed with the rim of her tight puckered hole. Seconds later he plunged his tongue inside her just as a gush of release blanched his mouth.

He slurped and drunk and sucked her in until his head felt light and his eyes began to roll backwards. It was then Felicity managed to wrestle herself free and sat up on her knees, allowing air to pass between them. Oliver gasped before he filled his lungs with air and winked away her concern.

“We didn’t discuss that,” she said as she sat back onto his chest, her warmness radiating across his skin.  
She leaned down and kissed her spoil from his lips, “Next time you want to skirt the sensation of asphyxiation, we discuss it,” she reprimanded against his lips as her nails scraped his cheek.  
“Yes Miss Smoak,” he grinned, ghosting the smile against her swollen lip, “but for the record I would have died very happy.”  
“It’s not a joke Oliver,” she warned, though she couldn’t stop the sneak of a smile at the tips of her lips.  
He had been in no real danger as she could have pushed off him forcefully if needed, but safety, frank discussions and trust were the attributes that allowed this sort of indulgent relationship work.

He nodded, sheepishly taking his reprimand and committing the feeling to his memory in case he wished to ask it of her another day. He licked the outline of his mouth and gathered what remnants remained of her spend before his hand rode up her chest and skated the rim of her nipple over the top of her dress.

“Watching you touch yourself,” he began with hummed delight, “it’s fucking heavenly.”  
“I know my body very well Mister Queen,” she vowed as her fingers ran down the sinewy cords of his neck and splayed out over his chest, drawing around the edge of her inner thighs.  
Oliver hummed blissfully as a smile sat, unashamed on his glistening lips.

She leaned back and slid her hand down his pants, touching skin to skin while her other hand dipped between her legs.  
“I also know your body very well,” she remarked while she gripped his cock tightly, pressing the heel of her hand into his base, “Would you like me to show you how good I am at multitasking Mister Queen?”  
Her one hand moved firmly up and down his shaft while the other spread her folds and teased her clit.  
“Fuck yes,” Oliver rasped hungrily.

_Fuck yes._


	10. The Crumbling Walls

It was Saturday night, nearing 6pm, when Tommy Merlyn gave himself a final once over in the elevator of his apartment complex as he rode the cab to the lobby. He checked that his teeth were free from any remnants of the quick meal he’d eaten; knowing full well that these events catered to both genders in shapewear, trying desperately to look smaller than they were, and therefore had little more than a selection of hors d’œuvres, which just wasn’t enough for his voracious appetite.

He rolled his palms down the sides of his red-trimmed jacket before adjusting the embroidered waistcoat, in a matching red brocade. As the floors ticked down, the dark-haired _rake_ practiced his best game face for the inevitable father/son reunion that would be frostier than Hoth.

 _But_ he lamented to himself, _his father would never see that awkward little boy, afraid of the repercussions of his ‘deviance’ again._ That Tommy was long gone, replaced instead by a man that refused to bow politely to his father’s ideas of social norms.

He was 14 when he realised his attraction wasn’t dependent on gender and, after living with his own back and forth regarding the same, he finally admitted his secret to his best friend. Oliver had taken it in his stride, listening, nodding and then asking Tommy why he had looked so terrified of telling him, because there was nothing Tommy could say, no preference he could have, that would end a life-long friendship such as theirs and _that was that_.

It was with the gusto of his best friend’s back that Tommy had decided to tell his father the same truth. The response could not have been more different.

Tommy swallowed down the past as he straightened his satin ebony cravat because he didn’t need those memories right now.

The elevator doors _binged_ open and Tommy took a deep inhale of air that broadened his chest before he stepped out onto the marbled foyer and settled his eyes straight ahead.

Undoubtedly, his father would be quite happy if Tommy banished himself to living a life in the shadows, cloaking his preferences and fetishes and hiding behind a 6ft wall, but Tommy Merlyn would never go quietly into the night.

He met his driver just outside the entrance and the older man, Carl, with wisps of grey hair threaded through tight black curls, smiled warmly as Tommy approached.

“Looking smart Mr Merlyn,” Carl enthused with a southern drawl he hadn’t lost in all his years domiciled in Starling.  
Tommy took the compliment like a child and smiled brightly, “back at you Carl.”

He slid into the back of the tinted limousine and jostled his shoulders against the leather seat before he realised he wasn’t alone. It was the aroma that hit him first, like a deliciously wonderful crack across his ass with a wooden cane, it was heady and warm and it was reminiscent of a decadent cinnamon bun straight from the oven.

He patted his lips together as his mouth began to salivate. He didn’t want to turn his head in case he lost the puff of her aroma that seemed to have settled right in front of his nose. He breathed in deeply, making a noise that was both dramatic and hedonistic, before his head tipped to the side.

With her body pressed into the corner of the car and an uneven smile blanched on her wine-red lips sat Emilia Spencer. She sat with one leg crossed over the other while her white dress of luxuriant satin slid up her thighs and her doe eyes batted thick, black lashes at him.

“Good evening Thomas,” she rasped as she uncrossed her legs and stretched one out towards him until the tip of her red shoes tickled his ankle.  
“Please, call me Tommy,” he replied, his voice a succulent tone of rasp and glee.

Emilia lolled her head to one side and teased her tongue between her pouted lips, “I prefer Thomas,” she purred before lifting the cuff of his trousers with the very tip of her shoe, “trust me, it’ll sound even better,” she shifted a little closer to him while keeping her eyes locked formidably to his, “if you can make me scream it.”

The car pulled away from the curb as gently as it could but their bodies still slid a fraction closer with the movement.  
“I’ll try my hardest,” Tommy answered, her coy smile evoking one of his own to thread across his lips.

He watched as her black-tipped finger dragged a line from the crest of her knee up her honey-toned thighs. He could feel the moan rolling up his throat and, like the failed beau that he was, he didn’t supress it when it reached his mouth.

Emilia drove her finger up her leg, cutting away her dress along the scandalous slit, before she hooked the same finger over the band of her sheer, white panties. Keeping her eyes half-lidded but tethered to Tommy’s, she dragged the same down her legs and stooped to collect them from her ankles.

Tommy held out his hand and she dropped them playfully into his waiting palm. Leaving a smile plastered to his lips, Tommy cupped his other hand underneath and brought them both up to his nose where he inhaled the heady scent of her arousal.

“Let’s see what you have,” she remarked as she spread her dress open across her thighs.  
Tommy gulped heavily, “Now?”  
She settled her head back into the leather seat and brushed the slight 1950s wave of hair back from her snowy complexion, “I don’t like to wait Thomas,” she hummed as her eyelids closed like blinds down her eyes.

Tommy smacked his lips together and took one more huff of the wisp of white in his palms before he tucked them into his pocket and crouched on the floor.  
“Yes ma’am,” he smiled as his eyes ravished the view up her spread legs to her glistening white rose.

* * *

  
Oliver was anxiously watching the door and trying to still his feet from their desire to pace. It was half seven and Felicity wasn’t here yet.

He had arrived hideously punctual, which brought a gasp of surprise to his mother when she saw him, so that he could do the necessary rounds of idle chatter and lightbulb flashes before she might arrive, allowing him to not be whisked away by something trivial and expected.

She had barely agreed to come as his _plus one,_ and Oliver was fairly certain the only tipping points in his favour had been the fact that it was a masquerade ball, which allowed for some level of anonymity, and that he promised her a tour of the QC warehouse of gadgets just out of state next month.

He’d watched as Felicity had tried, rather transparently, to not act like a kid being told they were going to Disneyland, but she couldn’t hide the very distinctive twinkle in her eyes as she undoubtedly thought of the many shelved gadgets that hadn’t _quite_ found their way into circulation.

His mother had mentioned the company needing to do a stocktake and perhaps sell off some of the lesser ranked tech to overseas companies in an effort to either gain some sell-off funds, some mergers with smaller companies more willing to sink time and effort into making something out of the failed projects, or broker some royalties/relationships with likeminded offshore companies.

It was like an appliance store selling off its floor models, only there was no guarantee these gadgets would work or have any practical value going forward.

After taking Alexander’s silver spoon management comment a little more to the heart than he would readily admit, Oliver dutifully offered to go himself to the warehouse to see what could be salvaged, bastardised, sold or resurrected.

Just because he had offered his mistress the opportunity to join him, didn’t make his offer any less worthy of validation and a gold star in CEO-ness.

With the dangling carrot of visiting a tech graveyard and the promise of some level of anonymity, Felicity had agreed to attend the Gala, but had – even when Oliver threw in a visit to _actual_ Disneyland only a few hours’ drive from the warehouse – categorically refused to arrive _with_ Oliver, insisting that she didn’t want to be pulled into walking the gauntlet of cameras with him – mask or no mask, there would be some attention given to the woman who was sulking behind Oliver Queen and she was of no mind to be hounded.

He would have argued, but for the fact she was absolutely right.

So her ticket was sitting with a valet outside and Oliver was trying his best not to march outside and check whether she had arrived – mostly because he knew she hadn’t; Oliver hadn’t taken his eyes off that door for over an hour.

He was dressed head to toe in a gothic ensemble of black on black, playing with texture and fabrics over colours and patterns and, as he toyed with the row of small blackened silver buttons at the cuff, he decided he would fit right in at a Vegas Magic Extravaganza in his getup.

The entire suit had a luxuriant satin finish and both the cuffs and the lapels of the jacket were detailed with rows of tiny ebony rhinestones that picked up and played with the light as he moved. His tie carried the same emblazonment and was clasped at the knot with a blackened and engraved clip.

It was certainly not _ordinary_ attire, and neither was the black face-fitted mask he wore like Zorro or the black cane with the polished pewter eagle’s head at the top. At least he’d managed to ward off his stylist’s penchant to put him in a top hat too.

He sighed to the empty air in front of him as he considered the very real possibility that Felicity wasn’t going to come, that perhaps she had finally woken up from the boyishly-charming spell he had tried his hardest to weave over her, because for all his wit and debonair, Oliver had never met someone so easily able to look through those curtains and walls and see him for precisely what he was, _unsure_.

He walled himself off from real relationships because of it. God forbid they try to look beneath his suave and try to pick away at his vulnerabilities, and yet, without even trying it seemed like Felicity had.

Somewhere between watching Megan drag a feather down her body and enjoying the easy banter with Felicity, Oliver's ideals had skewed. And, after discovering both women were the same, his entire _self_ had altered.

_Oliver was afraid he was..._

“Are you waiting until you can leave, or waiting for someone to arrive?” a soft, velvety tone floated through the air and brushed against Oliver’s jaw from behind.  
It wasn’t one he recognised and while, once, he may have turned toward it (recognising the sound of wanton desires in a woman’s voice had been somewhat of a gift Oliver possessed) tonight there was nothing that would take his eyes from that door until Felicity arrived through it.

He breathed in, out of necessity not want, the musky aroma of her perfume. It was heavy with the scent of lavender and while not unpleasant, it felt like it weighed the air down around him.

He couldn’t help but counter it with the memory of Felicity’s far lighter scent of citrus and coconut, with hints of vanilla, like a tropical cocktail to his senses.

“They say a watched door never opens,” the same voice echoed and Oliver remembered he wasn’t alone with his thoughts.

A willowy brunette with legs that most men would happily climb sauntered in front of him until he was forced, out of simple politeness to acknowledge her with a smile.

He was sure she was attractive, olive complexion with rich chocolate hair and thick coffee eyes hidden behind a mask of copper and white, and perhaps, once, Oliver would have found himself offering her the chance at a quick fuck in a storeroom or bathroom stall simply to work out his nerves or frustrations or to quell boredom for half an hour.

“Like a toaster then I suppose,” he offered with a slight chuckle, though his eyes never staved off from the doors.  
“Isabel,” she hummed as she stretched out her arm, although Oliver had not asked.  
He took her hand and turned what she had offered for his lips into a fleeting and completely asexual handshake.  
“I know I’m not supposed to divulge my identity,” she laughed, breathily and a little hoarse while Oliver politely nodded, “but for you, who could resist?”

A year ago she would have been an easy target for meaningless sex, and while he would have ensured she left satisfied, he would have forgotten she existed once he washed her spend from his shaft.

But he had become restless with that life and it no longer held any appeal.

He opened his mouth to usher some words from them that might appease but distance him from her attentions – they were wasted on him – but his mouth hung open and wordless when finally the doors opened and Felicity appeared.

They may have been separated by a grand ballroom and well over a hundred mulling bodies, but Oliver didn’t need an empty room or close proximity to know it was her.

The deep hunter-green velvet dress draped seductively from her shoulders, plunging towards her navel without showing itself garish or obscene. Her lithe arms, completely shrouded in the decadent fabric, hung alongside her hips as they swayed, almost felinely, while she walked. The bottom of the dress fanned out around her ankles while her left leg was exposed by the mid-thigh split and it had Oliver pushing his tongue into the roof of his mouth just to stop from swallowing it. The centre of the dress swathed around her hips and waist before it ruched around her back. Her hair was like threads of gold woven into thick waves that were pinned back on one side by a diamond-encrusted hair comb that Oliver couldn't help but imagine her running down the centre of his torso, leaving fiery red drag marks on his skin in its wake.

Her mask wasn’t like any Oliver had seen before and at first glance it resembled the black lace of a fascinator fallen asymmetrically over half her face, but as she moved closer and Oliver’s eyes deepened their focus, he saw the deep smoky black of her eyes float out into fine lace painted across the other side of her face, playing tricks with his mind despite Oliver knowing it was her.

“My apologies,” he droned as his voice drifted, into a monotonous tone, “I should…” he was already a least ten feet away from the stunned brunette when he finished his sentence, “…go.”

As he walked closer his pace quickened and he thought only about taking her at the waist and sinking his wet lips onto her succulently glossed ones in front of everyone there without a care about the whispers that might soon fill the air. Let them talk, let them wonder – _he didn’t care._

But he stopped himself half a foot from her instead, because he knew Felicity _would_ care.

“Miss Smoak,” he greeted with a smile that turned up the corners of his lips and plumped his cheeks.  
She dipped her head just fractionally making her eyes lift up to keep a watch over him, “Mister Queen.”

“You look…” _beautiful, perfect, amazing, ethereal_ the synonyms bounced around his mind before he settled for “…ravishing.”  
Her cheeks pinked under her warm peach blush as though his choice of word conjured up an epiphany of lewd thoughts.  
_Which it had._

His fingers reached out and barely grazed the soft fabric coating her arm, “Would you care to dance?” he asked with a gravel in his throat he didn’t dare to clear in case it let go of the licentious growl he was holding back.  
Her lips curved into an impish smile, “I didn’t think you danced.”  
He leaned in a little closer, smiling as the hints of fresh citrus and vanilla caught his senses, “If it means I can hold you against my body, I’d be a fool not to.”

Her tongue peaked between her lips before she answered with her eyes and her hand threaded through the crook of his elbow.

Oliver didn’t know the song the string quartet was playing and ordinarily he wouldn’t care to have either, but the melody he was certain would now forever be committed to his memory.

He didn’t know when it had happened.  
He wasn’t sure he could pinpoint the moment or even the ballpark when what had once been built on pleasure and intemperance altered into moments where he missed her fruity scent or when he craved to make her lips float into a smile, or better yet, a laugh. 

Oliver didn’t know when it had happened.  
He’d fallen in love.

He was a novice to the idea, but still he was certain of his feelings because of the way he caught his breath hitching and his chest tightening when the hand that held her lower back close to him smoothed over her naked back; exposed by the drape of her backless gown.

It was like she was electricity itself and his fingers the conduit it fed through as they swayed in time with the classic lulling music that filled the barely lit dancefloor.

He was unequivocally falling for her.

“I’m afraid I’m having very inappropriate thoughts about you Felicity,” he whispered, brushing his lips against her ear as his mouth ducked behind the curtain of her hair.  
“Such as?” she asked inquisitively before she tucked the corner of her lip into her mouth and held it there with her teeth.  
Oliver supressed a moan through a clenched jaw before he slipped his hand just a fraction lower so that the tips of them grazed her ass, “I wonder what you might be wearing underneath.”  
She smiled and for a moment Oliver considered she might not give him an answer, until her lips parted and she breathily replied, “Almost nothing.”

He tugged his hand higher up her back and put a handful of inches between them, knowing that if he allowed himself the indulgence to be dangerously close to her for much longer he would find his palpable desire to kiss her far too much for him to take.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked, needing a moment to settle the hardening rod between his legs.  
_Mmm_ she simply hummed back as she dragged her nails down the taut shoulder of his blazer.  
“What would be your poison?”  
She furrowed her brow as she considered her options, moments later she lifted onto the balls of her shoes and pressed her lips in close to his ear, “Whatever you would like to taste on my lips later.”

 _Fuck_ Oliver bit his fist to stop himself from outwardly cursing as Felicity sashayed away. He contemplated falling at her feet right then and kissing every inch of her foot in front of a crowd of befuddled onlookers as he admitted his feelings for her.

But Megan had warned him of the attachment and it was one of her only rules:  
_What we have isn’t love._  
_You don’t love me._  
But he did.

He moved towards the bar as he tried to get a handle on the tempestuous thoughts brewing in his head. He ordered her a whiskey sour – a call back to that auspicious order that had piqued his interest months ago – and a gin and soda water for himself; hardly an urbane drink, but Oliver needed only a feathering of liquid courage to possibly admit to Felicity what he’d only just decided to admit to himself.

He was in love with her.

He looked over his shoulder towards the table where Felicity had walked and when he found her not alone his lips instinctively grimaced.

The man beside her needed no further introduction, it was Alexander Wolfe.

She touched his arm and candidly laughed.  
He pressed her hand between his palms and bowed his head.  
She nodded.  
He smiled.  
Their hands fell away from each other and she walked him towards a side door.  
He opened it and she slipped through.  
He followed.  
The door closed back itself.

Oliver tried, _repeatedly_ , to remind himself of what Felicity had said, but before he could gain a level-headed perspective, he found himself telling the bartender to hold the drinks before he walked towards the side door that Felicity and Alexander had gone through moments before.

**~*~*~*~**

The crisp air brushed against Felicity’s cheeks as her and Wolfe stepped out into the burgeoning spring evening. The clouds hung like puffy white sponges drinking in the deep blue of the night sky as fresh stars glistened from where they dangled.

“I wanted you to know,” Alexander quipped with a permanent smile etched over his lips as his hand fossicked in the inside pocket of his slate-grey jacket, to return with a small black box.

He opened it carefully and Felicity grinned at the 1910 antique diamond cluster ring that resembled a sparkling flower in bloom set atop a polished platinum band.

“It’s beautiful,” she cheered brightly, though her voice remained quiet.  
“I walked past it the other day and something came over me,” he gushed, markedly different in his composure than a business soiree would ordinarily see him adopt.  
Felicity chuckled, “Cupid?”  
“Perhaps,” he nodded in agreement as his brows raised towards his hairline, “am I crazy?”  
“For following your heart?” she asked rhetorically with her head slightly tipped to one side as Alexander closed the lid of the box and carefully slipped it back into his pocket, “I don’t think so.”

She touched his elbow and gave him a knowing smile, “You have always made smart decisions so this one won’t be any different.”  
“Thank you,” he mouthed and his eyes chorused his thanks.

Felicity’s hand fell away from his arm and banded around her waist as her eyes tipped up mindlessly towards the sky, her mind adrift with thoughts she wasn’t sure how to process.

“He loves you, you know,” Alexander remarked, severing the idyllic waves of Felicity’s thoughts.  
She turned towards him making her hair fall forward over her shoulder, “It’s infatuation, it’s not love,” she corrected.

His lips rutted at her answer before his eyes tethered to hers, “Maybe for you, but it’s more for him.”  
She blew out a puff of air and it swirled like smoke for only a second before it dissipated, “And how would you know that, because he’s told you?” she jested.

Alexander blinked down, a rare move for him, before his eyes tapered back up and he put his hand to his heart, “Because I’ve been him.”

“Alex…,” she sighed, fishing up old memories of just one of the reasons she had come to Starling set on writing another chapter of her story.

He allayed the concern in her eyes with a smile, “I know you didn’t love me like that Felicity, I always knew your heart would never be mine and I was okay with that, happy to be with you in whatever capacity I could,” he spoke words she had heard before, “but he’s _not_ me and I know the eyes of a man in love. Don’t close yourself off to it Felicity.”

She took in his poignant words with a soft smile and a gentle nod.  
_Maybe he was right?_

**~*~*~*~**

Oliver stood at a distance at the balcony’s open doors with his feet anchored to the polished granite floor and his eyes swallowing down every minuscule movement they made.

He should leave.  
He should turn around and leave, putting his faith in what Felicity had told him, knowing that she had every right to ask him to trust her, but something kept him there.

 _Fear?_  
_Intrigue?_  
_Desperation?_  
He didn’t know, maybe it was a mix of all three doused with an incorrigible need to know.

Even though the evening was still enough for him to hear distant noises of city traffic, he couldn’t hear their words and settled for only what his eyes could make out.

Felicity leaned into Wolfe and hugged him.  
He embraced her back, his larger frame enveloping her.  
As she pulled away, her lips move near his ear.

**~*~*~*~**

“I promise,” she whispered before she pecked a soft kiss to his cheek.

Her eyes pulled to the side and into the distance as a subconscious thought dragged her there.  
_Oliver_  
He was standing in the doorway, his broad shoulders barely contained inside it, with his eyes trained on them. His face wasn’t holding any expression and after she blinked, he was gone like a figment of her imagination.

_Only he wasn’t._

“I have to go,” she apologised as Wolfe unravelled his arms from around her back, “the ring is beautiful and she will absolutely say yes,” she added with a smile.

She followed Oliver’s ghosted footsteps towards the ballroom, worried he might do something foolish, but her fears are assuaged when she rounded the corner to find him, leaned up against the wall and turning the ball of his cane in his palm.

“I’m sorry, I had no right to follow you,” he lamented while his eyes stayed downward, only looking up once his words were finished.  
His eyes were filled with regret, although whether it was due to being seen or for _what_ he saw, Felicity was undecided.

“I am trying,” he added with a plea threaded thickly through his tone, “Trying not to take you and claim you and fight any man that looks at you.”  
He admitted his thoughts as his head shook back and forth.

“Is your driver outside?” she asked, her delicate fingers splaying across his neck, jaw and cheek.  
He looked at her curiously before he answered an affirmative, “Yes.”  
“Good,” she took his hand and laced their fingers together, “let’s go.”

They were in the back seat of his midnight-black town car and pulling away from the curb when Oliver spoke again, “Where are we going?”  
Felicity turned to face him, the side of her dress gaping down to the floor as it spilled from her leg, “Oliver do _you_ trust _me_?”  
The inflections in her tone echoed through his brain, he did trust _her_.  
“Yes, _you_ ,” he admitted.

Her fingers tangled into each other, “What we do is based around trust, without it we can’t have what we do Oliver,” she explained, each word carefully spoken with both her eyes and her lips, “Not just sexually, I also trust you with my secrets.”  
With every fibre in his being, Oliver knew she was right; without trust this _arrangement_ didn’t work.

She tickled her fingers along his bent knuckles like piano keys as she sighed softly, “Wolfe isn’t here for me of that much you can be absolutely sure for reasons that aren’t mine to tell. But there will be _other_ men Oliver,” she spoke so quietly the gentle sound of the road passing underneath the car almost drowned her out, “other men that might look at me, probably not as Felicity,” a smile tweaked one corner of her lips and Oliver wanted to correct her misconception that _Felicity_ was any less alluring than _Megan_ , “but perhaps as Megan.”

He raked a hand through his hair, “I don’t know how to trust them.”  
She smiled and a breathy laugh lightened the air, “You don’t need to, you only need to trust me.”

Fingers feathered his jaw and his eyes hooded over, “When you have that level of trust, a hundred eyes could be looking at me and they won’t be important. The only thing that will matter is where my eyes are, and Oliver…” she mirrored her words with her actions by keeping her sapphire eyes bound to his, “…they’ll be on you.”

He watched the sincerity bleed from each word she spoke as the car pulled to a slow stop in a familiar lane.  
“We’re at Verdant?” Oliver asked curiously as his eyes surveyed what he could see out the windows.  
“Yes,” she answered with a nod, “I want you to prove that you trust me and I’ll show you that you can.”

He gripped her hand with his, “How?”  
“I want you to display me,” she whispered softly, each word spoken more prurient than the last as he watched the thrill of the idea rouse in her hungry eyes, “touch me, kiss me, have me,” her voice whimpered under a moan, “while others look on.”

His chest tightened as his heart felt ready to push through his ribs. He could feel the temperature spike across his body as his hands became clammy and his mouth became bone dry. The idea of sharing even just the vision of her with anyone else made him grind his teeth and tense his jaw, _but she was asking…_

* * *

  
Inside the Club, Oliver’s thumb grazed down the inside of Felicity's wrist, slowly to savour the way he could feel her blood moving through her veins underneath. The red ribbon looked stark next to her alabaster complexion, like a vivid red carpet laid over pure snow. The knot wasn’t tight and dropped toward her palm as Oliver lowered his lips and gentle sealed the union with a lingered kiss.

He had not wanted to mark her skin in anyway and the flaccid knot said more than a tight restraint ever would; that she could easily release herself from him if she wanted.

His kiss stilled, lips against her heated pulse, and he took the moment to breathe her in. The sweet vanilla aroma of her body lotion was almost edible and his tongue cheekily swirled behind the curtain of his lips before he pulled back and pressed the ghost of his kiss deeper into her skin with the slightly roughed pad of his thumb.

His eyes roved around the dimly lit room, the wall lights saturated green into the embossed black walls and Oliver imagined how the light might play on her powdery complexion. She was a Rembrandt that deserved the most favoured place in the gallery.

A smile tickled his lips when he saw it, a slanted beam near the centre of the room where an opulent green light bled down the reflective black finish. That would be her stage.

Her fingers barely held the tips of his as Oliver walked her towards the pillar. He stopped a little ahead of the same and brushed her hair back from her shoulder.

“Your stage awaits,” his whispered into her ear before his lips fell with toppled kisses down to her neck. He felt her breath fan across his jaw, making the skin beneath his bristles prickle in anticipation.

Her body swerved against his like a ballroom move that skimmed her chest against his before she fell against the pillar and let her fingers explore the smooth surface behind her.

Oliver twirled his fingers through the ends of her golden hair as his body invaded and shadowed hers. He watched the way the green light haloed her figure and dusted slopes of her shoulders in a pale emerald.

He watched her chest rise and fall under the draped and decadent fabric with just a dusting of shimmering powder between her breasts, making his throat tighten and the next words come, strangled from his mouth, “Are you sure?”

His cock was aching but he would put that aside, burying it beneath his craving for Felicity, limp and spent his arms. On her stage, he would feast on her.

She nodded, soft but decisive and Oliver wasn't left wondering what his goddess draped in velvet wanted from him. He kissed her and it was instantly forceful, to strip any inhibitions that lingered between them. His hand held her at the small of her back with his thumb skimming the edge of the low-back dress before pressing into her spine while his knuckles grazed the smooth pillar. The other hand weaved up the centre of her body before his hand wrapped around her throat, he would feel each sigh that rose before it brushed his lips and he would enjoy every swallowed moan she made.

Inquisitive eyes turned towards them and Oliver felt the heat pass from his lips onto hers before Felicity fed her tongue through his lips and stole his attention from the shuffled feet of the curious.

Soon all he could hear were her keening signs as his thumb stroked her spine before dipping down the fabric and grazing the crest of her rear. As their lips sunk into each other amidst shared breaths and tapered moans, Oliver’s hands left off her body entirely so the only place where their bodies melded were their mouths and lashing tongues.

Felicity whimpered at the loss of his touch, and a clearer head would have seen her demanding they return, but his lips had her entranced and able to only speak in drawn moans and short gasps before his teeth sunk into her lower lip.

His feisty move was rewarded by an arch in her back that pushed her breasts into his chest, and then his hands were back on her, cupped over her shoulders and pressing her back against the pillar. She appealed in dripping, breathy moans for Oliver not to leave her again and he played to her needs when his hands clasped her shoulders tightly.

She relished the desperation in his move, as he wordlessly admitted what she was doing to him, and even when she could feel his fingers bruising her skin, Felicity craved _more_. The crowd of eyes around them grew, and she knew he was suppressing his desire to steal her away into darkness where only his eyes could want for her.

His thumbs hooked under the shoulders of her dress and pulled the fabric up from her skin, pegging it in the air just enough to allow his thumbs to pass underneath with his knuckles grazing her bone. His lips brushed her cheek like a paintbrush dragging across canvas until he reached her ear and feathered a kiss at the seam.

“I want to undress you,” his tone was whispered and his hands fisted at the velvety fabric.  
He was asking, searching her eyes, her breath, her mouth for any hint of reservation, but he found none.  
Her consent came by way of a rasped “Yes,” that fell from her lips.

He tugged her dress down from the shoulders, exposing her milky skin and perfectly rounded breasts. They shook with each breath she took as her heart raced and the sudden exposure.

Oliver could feel the crowd building and he could hear the quiet gasps, not of surprise but of pleasure. He rounded her nipple with his thumb, watching as the rosy skin puckered and tightened under his attentions. Her arms were lithe either side of her body before Oliver threaded each hand out of the sleeves of her dress and gently guided them above her head, crossing one over the other and letting her wrists dangle beside her bent elbows.

The move pulled her breasts taut and defined the perfect crest and slope of them before his fingers traced the sinewy lines down her neck, splaying wider before they dissipated down her naked and silken chest.

As he dragged his fingers down to her waist, Felicity bucked into him, desperately searching for some frictional relief from the aching between her legs. He leaned down and kissed her chest, cupping one breast in his mouth as his fingers twisted in hair that spilled down her back. She tugged on his hand as she looked down toward him and his eyes wandered up to hers.

He drew back and studied her, noting the subtle flush of pink that now fanned down her paled complexion from her breastbone. His thumb, rough at the tip, traced the lines his teeth had grazed into her breast and Felicity wondered if he was surprised or intrigued by them, but all her thoughts left when Oliver crouched and lick the flat of his tongue over the tight peak of her nipple before he moved his lips slowly down her stomach.

He knew people were watching and he could hear the low sounds of their breathing all around him. They toyed with his senses and made him desperate to see her eyes once more. Looking up her body, he searched her face – blonde hair spilled down one side, her mask stayed in place and her lips were wet and parted, but it was her eyes he needed – and he found them just as she had promised; on him.

Groans that were neither his now hers gently filled the air as Oliver pressed a kiss along her public bone and slipped his hand under her dress, and it was then he realised something quite profound – he was _proud_ not _jealous_.

 _She was with him._  
Her body swayed at the knees and her mouth dripped wantonly _for him._  
The smell of her heady vanilla-scented arousal pulsing off her skin was _for him._  
_She was with him, because she **chose** to be._

She pulled him up by his tie and their lips mashed heavily together before his tongue dominated her mouth. His thumb pinched her nipple both hurtfully and rousingly and Felicity moaned against his smirking lips.

Dragged kisses fell down her neck before he began to bite at the thin threads of her skin while tiny pools of sweat glistened in the crevices of her shoulders.

“Make me naked,” she whispered in his ear with a gravelled neediness that made Oliver reactively groan against her skin as his cock throbbed behind his gothic attire.

He stepped back to admire her like a piece of art; her porcelain skin looked luminescent against the dark velvet dress that floated about her waist. Deftly he walked fingers to the small zip at her back and tugged it gently down until her dress spilled open around her body before she lifted her back from the pillar and let it puddle on the floor.

He took his cane and turned it upside down, curving his thick fingers around the end of the smooth, black shaft and then he dragged the head of it up the heel of her patent black shoes before he tapped her ankles apart.

Wilfully she widened her stance and Oliver continued to trail the pewter eagle’s bust up her calf before repeating the same light tap to her knee. Her legs opened wider still as the cool metal prickled the back of her knee and a salacious cry stumbled from her mouth.

His uneven smile pulled even higher as Felicity’s breath quickened and her chest tightened under his gaze and that of the other shameless watchers. She witnessed as the enjoyment twinkled in his eyes, with his knowledge that no one else could touch her or enjoy her like he was at that very moment.

The engraved head rolled over her thighs as Oliver dragged it higher until it pressed against her thin lace and cotton panties. He worked his hand down the shaft, putting his fingers within a hair’s breadth of her sex and his lips barely an inch from her pillowed mouth.

He ghosted her lips with a kiss that barely made contact while he brushed the eagle between her folds, making her shudder against the pillar as a whimper floated from her mouth. He watched as the breath stilled in her throat and tightened the skin there, while her breasts lifted up her chest, all pert and supple. He pushed the head deeper and harder until it crushed her sex beneath its smooth rounds and her body trembled.

His other hand slid down her ribs and sunk into her waist as he pinned her against the pillar so that her wavering knees wouldn’t let her stumble. Slowly, at first, he began to rub the head between her folds, gauging the quickening of her breathing before he matched the rhythm of it to his strokes.

He could see her slick juices glistening through her almost-sheer panties before he leaned in and nipped at her ear, “Fuck it Megan,” he instructed with a heady growl, and she reacted almost instantly by grinding her hips and rolling the object into her swelling sex to take what she needed from its unmalleable curves.

It abraded her clit quite deliciously and if it wasn’t for Oliver’s anchored hand, Felicity would have dropped to her feet as the feeling completely engulfed her, like fire consuming paper, most completely and without mercy.

As her keening cries became more hurried and her breathing became increasingly erratic, Oliver flurried kisses across her damp shoulders before abruptly pulling away and dropping the cane from her cunt.

Her body shook but her eyes stayed wide and locked onto Oliver as he brought the head of the cane up towards his mouth. With his azure eyes trained on her and a wickedly deviant smile danced at the edges of his lips, he licked it, _twice_ , with tediously slow strokes, making sure to indulge each taste bud in the remnants of her juices which had spilled through the thin cotton weave.

He could hear the adoration and jealousy from those around them before he dropped to his knees and kissed her slick residue from the tops of her thighs.

Before Felicity could focus on the light flicks of his tongue along her thighs, he had sucked her, panties and all, into his mouth. It was relentless and fast, with a lashing of his tongue slicing between her folds. His breath heated her taint as she struggled to keep her eyes from screwing closed in complete and undulating pleasure.

She cupped her own breasts, palming one and then the other in a haste that was mirroring Oliver’s ravenous blitz on her sex.  
_You look ravishing._  
She found herself smiling at the prophetic words he had uttered earlier that night before a gush of pink saturated her body as she thundered closer to climax.

He pulled her panties to the side, making sure to keep one secret still between them as his face hide her dripping sex, now all flushed a fleshy and rosy pink, from voracious eyes. With his lips kissed around her clit he thrust two digits into her entrance making her cry out desperately as his wide fingers filled her.

He kept up the pattern, his tongue swirled around her clit and his fingers twisted and snaked against her drenched and cushioned walls, until her knees shivered and her body griped his fingers like a vice. A shuddering moment later and her warm, sweet release blanched his smiling lips.

He continued to kiss her swollen lips while his tongue lapped up her spend and his fingers slowed to gently ease her body through it.

When she felt limp and still in his hand that still propped her waist against the pillar, Oliver stood and placed a tender kiss on her ruby cheek.

He shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around her body as she hugged, almost weightless, against his chest. He gave her a moment to find her feet again before he helped thread her arms through his jacket. Taking her hand, he bowed, like an Earl and delicately kissed the back of her knuckles before he collected her puddled dress and the two walked through the crowd of vivid smiles and cooing breaths.

Tommy, with his arm linked with Emilia’s, met Oliver and his art in an almost blackened corner of the room where no one else lingered.

“That was quite the show,” Tommy effused as his tongue tasted his lips, now stained the same colour as Emilia’s, “anytime you and your stunning friend wish to indulge again like that, you have a stage here.”  
“I’m surprised to see you here,” Oliver grinned with his arm protectively around Felicity’s shoulders as she started to regain her faculties.  
“I had been intending to make the Gala but I got a better offer,” Tommy’s eyes dropped to Emilia as she laughed animatedly.  
It was only then that Oliver noted Tommy wasn’t wearing a mask.

Sensing his friend’s questions, Tommy touched the side of his face and acknowledged the absence, “I’ve decided I have nothing to hide anymore, hell I might even change the Club’s name to Merlyn’s Kinky Fuckfest, just to really piss the old man off,” he jested, although Oliver wasn’t quick to assume it was merely a joke, “But enough about me, can I get you two a room, or another stage?”

“Just the bathroom so I can get changed Mister Merlyn,” Felicity quipped.  
Tommy choked on his drink as he spluttered out his surprise.  
“Miss Smoak?”  
She smiled, neither confirming nor denying but there was no mistaking her now.

“You looked beautiful out there,” Emilia cooed, in such a tone that Oliver felt a question instantly spring from his lips.  
“You two know each other?”  
Felicity nodded as she cuddled instinctively into Oliver’s chest, “I’ll tell you about it sometime.”  
Oliver couldn’t help but notice the devilish smile that had taken Tommy’s lips as an eyebrow raised towards his hairline.

* * *

  
After Felicity had changed and the two were sitting in tranquil peace in the back of the gently swaying car, Oliver leaned over and pecked a kiss to Felicity’s warm cheek.

“Felicity, do you trust me?” he asked softly as threads of hope and uncertainty framed his tone.  
Her hand combed through the side of her hair, “Yes,” she answered like a sigh.  
He took her hand from his head and pressed it between his palms as he took a breath and stilled his thumping heart.

“Come back to my place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Memo will be on a break next week xox


	11. The Switch Proposition

His hands were eager as they walked wordlessly to the elevator and the urge in them grew even more intense as the floors clicked over and the idle chatter of the other guests in the opulent cab grew softer and sparser as each subsequent stop saw the box slowly empty.

But, by some miracle and a self-deprivation Oliver didn’t know he was capable of, he kept his hands to himself and pinned to his sides, flexing and releasing a fist every time he found them wandering from that spot.

It wasn’t that he didn’t _want_ to touch her – nothing could be further from the truth – and he didn’t necessarily consider Felicity would mind if his wandering hand swept down the curve of her ass as they stood against the back, brushed-chrome, wall; but Oliver was testing _himself_. While he had come to the realisation that he had feelings for Felicity that went above and beyond the voracious urges throbbing through his body.

And so far, as he watched a smile flirt at the corner of her lips and wondered what thoughts had put it there, it was becoming apparent that his feelings for Felicity were much more than sexual appetite.

Eight floors away from the penthouse, they were finally alone and Felicity skimmed her chin against his satiny jacket as she looked back towards him. Her lips parted and he wondered if she might speak and he found himself waiting with a kept breath to hear her. But they closed again, leaving the same smile toying with the corner of her lips before her head moved and her eyes drew away.

And then Oliver did something he hadn’t planned on and honestly, he didn’t even recall considering it. He took her hand into his and just _held_ it.

Her brow furrowed for just a second as she looked down, a little bewildered by his actions, but she didn’t step away or retract her hand, she left it there and even curled the tips of her fingers around his.

It was innocent, comparatively, to sexual familiarities they had shared over the months and yet in that one little act there was more intimacy than anything that had come before.

The doors opened and with their hands still entwined they walked the same short path across a water-coloured marbled foyer and into his Penthouse suite that they had the night of the Christmas party. It was only once the apartment door closed, enveloping them in a world of their own, did their hands fall apart.

She shrugged his jacket from her shoulders and, after stroking her fingers slowly down the limp arm, she handed it to him with a genteel, “thank you.”  
Oliver took the jacket and placed it blindly and haphazardly on the back of an armchair as he walked Felicity deeper into the apartment.

The spectacle of lights from outside lit up her face in hues of yellow and white before Oliver’s hand swooped in with shadows and cupped her cheek. She could sense words on the tip of his tongue but even when his lips parted, he never relinquished them.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked impishly as her fingers traversed his black shirt pulled taut across his shoulders, “it could be anything,” she added before her teeth plucked the corner of her lower lip.  
“Anything?” Oliver rasped, his voice deep and hungry.  
Her eyes danced with an array of lights like planes around her pupils as she delicately laughed at the carnality of his reply, “You indulged me tonight so I’m choosing to indulge you back.”

Oliver felt the heavy lump in his throat strangle out a groan as he imagined countless things he’d thought about doing to her, with her, for her, but brushing those aside – at least for now – Oliver realised he wanted something different, something more, something she might not be willing to give him.

“Have dinner with me,” he breathed out the request like a sigh that had sat anxiously behind his lips, and he felt only freedom once letting it loose.

He wanted her time.

She smiled, a little confused by his request, “Is that code for something?”  
His thumb brushed up her silken cheek, “No,” he sighed between a smile, “I want you to have dinner with me, here, where we can be alone, together”  
He saw the hesitation in her eyes for just a moment before she blinked it away.  
“I’m starving,” he continued, his voice now velvety and warm, “I thought maybe you might be hungry too.”

He slipped his fingers between hers and sighed, relieved, when she didn’t pull them away this time either, before he led her into the opulent guest bathroom. Taking his eyes off her for only a moment, Oliver reached down and twisted the vintage-inspired brushed-copper tap to flood water into the claw foot slipper tub.

“If you don’t like any of those, I can ring down to the desk and get something else,” he remarked as he pointed to a display of untouched bath delicacies on the nearby stool.  
“Oliver what are you doing?” she asked as her cheeks blushed a warm rose.  
“Taking care of you.”  
Her eyes softly blinked as a sighed smile danced across her lips, _while she appreciated the sentiment_ , “I don’t need…”  
Oliver squeezed her hand gently as a smile stay unabashed on his lips, “I know you don’t need me too, of course you don’t need me to, you have your life put together exponentially better than I have mine,” he chuckled, “but I _want_ to.”

A finger grazed the slope of her neck as she considered his words. Silently, she turned and traced the zip on her dress, “Okay.”  
He peeled it down slowly, much more languidly than he had done earlier that night, as he watched the edges slip from her shoulders.

It fell like a heavy drape around her ankles before Felicity stepped out from the centre of the pooled fabric. He stooped and collected her dress as she stripped the last remaining thin wisp of black fabric from her body. The fabric of her dress melted between the pads of his fingers before he draped it carefully over an empty towel rail.

His lips swooped onto her naked shoulder, kissing a trail from the cusp to the gentle slope of her neck, his tongue feasting on the small remnants of musk he found there while Felicity selected and dropped an orange and grapefruit scented bomb into the churning water.

“The towels are under the sink,” he sighed as his lips caressed her neck.  
“Mmmhmm,” she hummed as she turned in his arms.  
The smell of citrus blossomed in the room as his lips hung dangerously close to hers.  
“There is a clean robe on the back of the door.”  
“Mmmhmm.”  
The sound of her throat humming made Oliver ache from lips to cock and his hand fisted at the small of her back, pushing her just that little closer to him.

He reached over and shut off the tap before he dipped his fingers into the warm water and swirled them slowly. After pulling his hand from the water he delicately circled the same damp and warm fingers around her peaked nipple.  
“Is it warm enough?” he asked, his breath ricocheting off her parted lips.

“Perfect,” she whispered as her nose nudged his, “you could join me.”  
He smiled impishly, “I would love to, but…” a sigh, “I’m interested in more than just your…” another sigh, “…perfect body.”

He pulled back, knowing his resilience would only last so long, before he chastely kissed her cheek and left the room.

* * *

  
With her hair pinned as best she could, Felicity let the luxuriantly-silky water lap up against her breasts. The temperature warmed her as her eyes softly closed against her slightly peached cheeks. As she inhaled the fruity scent of the bubbles Felicity allowed herself to really _feel_ her body.

Her nipples were peaked and her upper thighs throbbed with the sensations of earlier. The hard, unmalleable feeling of his cane rocking against her folds and scourging, most deliciously, her aching clit to the soft, folding sensations of his lips moulding and curving around her to perfectly give her what her body had craved.

Her nails trekked down her submerged ribs as her head sunk back onto the vinyl bath pillow as she recalled the shadows in his eyes, the _look but don’t touch_ in his smile and the bravado of his showmanship. He had put her on a pedestal and made her a spectacle but had somehow managed to make it more intimate than any moment she had ever experienced before.

With tempestuous eyes, Felicity considered Alexander's words, _was there the possibility Oliver felt more than infatuation?_

_And if he did, did she?_

* * *

  
The plush bathrobe felt like an embrace from a childhood teddy bear and Felicity couldn’t help but sigh serenely as she allowed herself to relax into it. A delicious aroma teased her senses as she opened the bathroom door. On feather-light footsteps she walked the heated floor until she found Oliver, now dressed in a stone-grey Henley and a pair of charcoal sweatpants with a dry dishcloth slung over one of his broad shoulders, in the kitchen hovering over the stone stop island.

When he saw her, Oliver couldn’t help but smile. He’d seen Felicity look beautiful before and he was no stranger to being enamoured by her looks and her presence, but with her face clear of make-up and the tips of her blonde hair darkened by water to a light brown she looked _utterly flawless_ and she literally, for just a moment, stole his breath away.

“Perfect timing,” he finally managed as he collected two full plates, one in each hand, and walked them, while he trawled her behind with his eyes, into the living room.

He placed the plates together on one side of the mahogany and glass coffee table, alongside the champagne on ice and two matching flutes. The gas fireplace decorated with smooth white pebbles created a soft and ambient light while the naked windows behind continued to show off the dazzling lights of the City.

“You cooked?” she asked, surprised but not shocked.  
A bashful smile set over his expression, “I dabble.”  
He gestured to the small bed of cushions he’d made in front of the coffee table.

“Are you surprised?” he enquired as he gestured her to sit, which she did.  
A smile blanched her lips as she looked over the spread of salad and tortellini, “A little.”

She felt a sudden urge to kiss him and without considering it further, Felicity took it. Her lips crushed into his and for a few moments his were startled into subjection before he realised what was happening and, with wet lips and a warm sigh, Oliver kissed her back.  
“What was that for?” he asked breathily with his eyes lazily hooded.  
Felicity shrugged nonchalantly, “I thought I should surprise you too.”

* * *

  
The plates were all but empty and the night well and truly settled in as the whittled away the time talking about nothing particularly deep or provoking, until Oliver sat back on his curled feet and said something he’d been thinking about for some time.

“You know, you never did tell me what you wanted in return for allowing my _friend_ to join us,” Oliver spoke coyly as his fingers fidgeted with the short hairs at the back of his neck.  
Felicity felt her cheeks warming from her fifth glass of wine as she considered the flirty glint in his eyes.  
“I think it’s beyond you,” she smiled whimsically as she took another sip before putting her glass on the table.  
Oliver closed the gap between them until their bodies shared the same space and their mouths shared the same air. He coiled a single finger around a ringlet of her hair and tugged it closer, dragging her lips along behind. Their lips touched, but it wasn’t a kiss, not yet.  
“Try me,” he ghosted against her lips in a tone that sounded like velvet.  
She gave him nothing more than a naked smile, lulling him into her seductive blue eyes before she tickled her fingers up his arm and rested her palm against his shoulder.

Moments later, and with a strength Oliver wouldn’t have predicted, but should have known, she had him with his back against the foot of the ivory suede couch, his shirt lifted from his body and her straddled across his lap with his wrists pinned into the sofa cushion behind his head.

She kissed, with feathered lips, a trail down from his ear to his parted lips, all while keeping her eyes carefully trained to his. She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth and Oliver reactively groaned as his arousal grew between his legs. And then she had the same lip snagged between her teeth, pulling it away until his jaw clenched.  
“I would have you for a weekend,” she whispered after she released his lip from the trap of her teeth, “I would test you,” she soothed her thumb along the rim on his lip as she continued, “Test every limit you have Oliver, until you forge your own line between pleasure and pain.” As the last word left her lips she dug her nails into the cusps of his shoulders and he reacted with a gritted hiss.

She held the pressure there as she watched his throat tense but his eyes haze over with pleasure, before she retracted her grasp and kissed the four red indentations she’d left on each side.

He relaxed into the delicate kisses she placed carefully over the areas that seconds ago had been aching while his eyes hooded over and his breath started to slow.  
“Then that’s what we should do. We have the visit out of state next week, I can make arrangements to extend it, no one needs to know.” he smiled, his eyes softening as they met with hers and for a moment he considered telling her what he’d only just realised tonight, but then she blinked away and Oliver lost his nerve.

“You truly want this Oliver?” she posed the question to him with slightly pouted lips and one eyebrow raised towards her hairline.  
He nodded and replied with a breathy, “Yes.”  
“Then I’ll make the arrangements,” she stated impishly, “I’m your EA after all.”

When a light chuckle blew through her lips Oliver smoothed his hands either side of her face and dove his eyes into hers, “Felicity I…”  
She could see it in his eyes, the feelings enraptured in tiny blue pools of emotion. She couldn’t let him say it, he’d only regret it.  
_“He loves you, you know,”_ Alexander’s poignant words echoed in her mind as her lips trembled with a plea for him to _not_.  
“Oliver are we okay?” she asked, abruptly halting the rest of his sentence in his mouth.  
His brows tugged to the centre, “Okay?”  
She brushed his hands with her own, loosening them from her cheeks before they fell to her waist, “With how things are,” she paused to roll her lips together, “how we decided they should be?”  
She saw his wide eyes deflate, “Things can change for the better though can’t they?”

“I think coming here was a mistake, I’m sorry, I should go,” she tremored for reasons she wouldn’t dissect right now.  
“Please don’t,” he remarked as he focused on unfurrowing his brow, “we’re okay.”  
The soft sounds of an evening rain shower tapped against the blackened glass and filled the silence that had opened up between them.  
“I don’t want to confuse the lines,” Felicity remarked softly.  
Oliver balanced a practiced smile on his lips as he gently shook his head, “No lines are confused. This is what this is,” he stroked his thumbs into the fleecy robe as he clung to her waist, “And what we both decided it would be.”  
“And you’re sure?”  
For now she would convince herself to believe whatever answer he gave, because she needed to.  
He nodded and answered with a resolute, “Absolutely.”

While the night carried on as best as it could with two elephants hiding in opposite corners of the room, it was a little before midnight when Felicity redressed and called a cab and Oliver held onto his epiphany that things _had_ in fact changed, because he’d fallen in love with her – _quite spectacularly._

* * *

  
**[A Week Later]**

**AN: So my crackship is rising and you will find throughout the next few chapters a couple of PWP one shots that feature Felicity and Alexander prior to Felicity meeting Oliver – you can absolutely bypass these if they aren’t your thing (they are[linked](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14196783/chapters/32724627) in this fic, but posted in a separate one), they do align with this story and give a little background and insight, but they aren’t necessary by any means. So… yeah, Thanks Ash, I blame you.**

She met him with a smile on the curb outside her apartment as Oliver pulled alongside in a new model Corvette Stingray in gloss black. He’d barely put the car in park before he shot out and around it to collect her luggage.

He wasn’t surprised that it was a matching set consisting of a small carryon and a rolled duffle bag but his interest was piqued as he considered _what_ exactly might be in those bags.

By the time her bags were settled in the boot next to his, Felicity had already settled herself into the flawless matte leather seat, waiting for him.

Once he was settled behind the wheel with his belt tight across his chest, Felicity handed him a small card, the size of a business card, with an address written neatly across it, _1674 Ridge Point._

He plugged the address into the GPS and studied the map once it appeared on the recessed display. As the name might suggest it was a small road that was probably once a forestry road and the house sat almost at the end of it, about a 3 hour drive away.

“Nice car,” Felicity remarked as her eyes roamed around the smooth curves of the leather and moulded interior framed in polished chrome.  
“I thought this trip was a good reason to get it out of the garage.”  
“What good is something this…” she sighed as her finger dabbed a creased smile at the side of her lips, “…beautiful, if you don’t get to take it out and ride it?”

Oliver tried his best to block the growl that he could feel rumble up his chest, but he couldn’t. All he could do was morph it into a deep groan that shuddered his lips because of her – entirely on purpose – innuendo.

“Don’t you think so Oliver?” she continued as the car pulled away from the curb and merged into traffic, “Beautiful things shouldn’t be hidden away from the world.”  
As she spoke she drew around the outline of his hand on the gearstick and turned the corners of her mouth up into a smile while her tongue peeked through.

“You’re beautiful,” he answered, rasped and breathless.  
She braced her head against the head rest before tipping it towards him, “and I enjoy being driven.”

Comfortable silence swallowed them as Felicity let her eyes lapse to her cheeks and the quiet sounds of the wheels running over the road soothed her palpitating heart. They hadn’t spoken about the night at Oliver’s apartment either during pleasantries at work or during their Tuesday night tryst where she proved herself far more flexible than Oliver could have conceived.

Her sundress rippled against her creamy thighs as she angled the blower down towards her. A smile plucked up the corner of her lips as, moments later, she heard the familiar sound of Oliver’s lips smacking together.

_He was watching her._

Almost a third of the way into their journey, and after a lapse in idle conversation, Oliver looked across the car and posed a question.  
“Will you tell me what you have in mind?”  
She smiled as she fettered her fingers down the pearlescent buttons of the linen sundress and relaxed her lips into a pout.

“Erotic sexual denial where I’ll be your top,” she answered with a bridled smile.  
Being a top was a role she had become accustomed to during her time with Alexander, but it was not her identity. Felicity, much like Oliver, was a switch and could fluidly change from a top to a bottom (a dominant to a submissive) depending on her mood or that of her partner.

Her same fingers trickled down over the rise of her breast as she listened to his breathing deepening before hitching in his throat as she gently teased her pearled nipple over the top of the whimsical paisley fabric.

He swallowed a million other questions as he tugged his eyes back to the road, “Have you ever denied?”  
“Yes,” she answered simply as she brushed a hand through her hair and fluttered her eyes open.  
Oliver’s lips pursed momentarily, “With him?”  
Her hands fell away from her body and folded over one another on her lap as she looked over at him, “Oliver,” she hummed his name in both affection and warning.  
“If I ask about your past, would you tell me?”

Her fingers found the hem of her dress and ran it absently between her pinched finger and thumb, “To what end?”  
“The club made me realise that I can focus my jealously,” he spoke calmly and considered, “Your past is who you are, what has made you today and we know how I feel about that person.”  
She looked at him with her brow quizzically raised as she studied his face moments after he was finished speaking, trying to find something that contradicted his words, but she couldn’t find anything, “Are you sure?”  
This time his smile wasn’t practiced or forced and while he wasn’t under the illusion it would be easy to hear what had made Felicity tick before him, he was desperate to know every inch of her, including that which lay beneath the surface. So he nodded his answer.

“Yes, I have practiced denial,” she paused, keeping her eyes trained on his for her next two words, “with him.”  
She expected a flinch or a pang of regret that he had asked, but she was met with neither, in fact the slight tug on his brow gave her the impression he had found some pleasure in knowing the answer.  
“Did you enjoy it?” he asked before he ran his tongue between his lips, wetting them as they warmed under his question.

Felicity brushed the side of her neck with her fingertips as she leaned back into the chair, arching her back, “Yes,” she hummed, the recall prickling her skin with intense reminders of the fire she had felt beneath it, “The rewards are quite fulfilling.”  
  
“How long did you last?” he asked, his eyes drifting between the fingers that floated down her neck and the long stretch of highway out ahead of him.  
“[Ten days](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14196783/chapters/32724627),” she answered with an indecent whimper at the end before she looked across the car at him wearing a playful smile, “you’re not surprised?”  
“Felicity,” her name passed like a sigh across his moist lips, “You have one of the strongest wills I know,” he caught her eyes with his own, “I don’t doubt you could accomplish whatever you put your mind to, professionally or _personally_.”

There was something about the last word he said that had Felicity virtually clawing at the fabric of her dress. Despite its thin weave and floating hem, it felt like fire against her aroused skin as she clenched her walls around a momentary tremble between her legs.

“Pull the car over,” she panted as her fingers churned circles on the inside of her thigh.  
Oliver didn’t need to be asked twice and he pulled into a gravel siding that veered off the road within seconds of Felicity issuing the request, that was verging on a demand.

The car skidded to a stop in a cloud of gravel dust as the nose of the car overlooked a valley of farmland and some curious cows along the fence line.

She laughed as he put the car into park and turned the engine off.  
“It didn’t have to be that instant,” she smiled as she tweaked her own nipple through her dress.  
“I wouldn’t want to make you ask twice Miss Smoak.”  
She answered him with a brazenly wide smile as she turned a little in her seat and pressed her back into the door and her head against the window.

With one foot on his chair and the other anchored to the floor, Felicity let her skirt fall down her legs and expose her silken thighs.  
“Would you kiss me please Oliver?” she instructed with a tone that guided him towards the only answer he was ever going to give.

He leaned across her, bracing one hand on the window beside her head and the other on the leather headrest, as he floated his lips closer to hers.

She stopped his lips’ descent onto hers with a single finger as she roguishly shook her head, “Not there Oliver,” her eyes traversed her chest and down between her legs with his following, “there.”

He sat a little ways back with as a vivid smile took over his entire face and pirouetted in his eyes before he folded her dress back and sighed happily at what he found there.  
“You’re not wearing any panties Miss Smoak.”  
She pouted as she shrugged, “I guess I forgot to pack any Mister Queen.”  
“All that luggage and you don’t have a single pair?” he growled as he could feel a familiar ache growing between his legs.  
“Nope,” she huffed coyly, the air blowing back hair from her face.  
“And you intend to wear dresses during this visit?”  
“Pant suits aren’t really my thing.”  
Oliver’s lips furrowed between a sigh and a smile.  
“Would you like to kiss me there Mister Queen?”  
She watched his Adam’s apple float down his throat before firing back up, “Yes.”

His lips dropped to the inside of her knee on the leg that was raised while his fingers slid up the other leg.

“But Oliver,” her words halted his lips an inch, _maybe two_ , away from her heady sex, “I’m the only one that gets to orgasm.”  
He nodded dutifully, “I understand.”  
She tussled his hair before tipping her head back against the glass, “Good,” she sighed blithely before she felt the warm and precise stroke of his tongue through her folds.

* * *

  
The 3 hour drive took almost 4 after they stopped a second time at Oliver’s request in a deserted rest stop off the interstate where he used his adept fingers to make her come for the second time that weekend. It was at this time also that Felicity had promised to answer whatever questions Oliver asked about her past, but that he should ask them carefully and she hoped for the same in return – a brokered deal Oliver had agreed to.

With that an hour or so behind them, Oliver turned the car off the road and onto a stone-chip driveway that disappeared into a thicket of pine trees and over-grown shrubs.

“Is this where you take me to kill me?” Oliver laughed morbidly as his eyes fell down her body and his cock, with a mind of its own, twitched at the continued realisation that she was naked underneath that tiny film of fabric he could rip apart without breaking a sweat.  
She smiled coyly as she dragged her fingers from her rounded knee all the way to the apex at the top of her thigh, making that teasingly thin fabric bunch up there, “Just torture you a little,” she answered before letting her eyes wander out the window and into the serene wilderness.

It was as isolated as she had expected, but far more tranquil than Emelia had described, which suited Felicity quite perfectly. She would rather spend a weekend in an isolated cabin than a 5-star hotel any day.

“I would like that,” Oliver remarked as his hand lay over the top of hers.  
She looked down at it, studying it closely with hinged brows as Oliver half expected her to pull away. But she didn’t and they drove up the winding drive, a few miles long, just like that.

Oliver stopped the car outside the small log cabin that looked like it had weathered more storms than most and had being built eons ago with a saw, a hammer, and brute hands.  
“Where did you find this place?” he enquired as his eyes walked from the gas lanterns swaying in the wind to the whittled bench on the porch. It was as though they had gone back in time.  
“It belongs to a friend.”  
Oliver’s jaw tensed as his head lunged straight for one possible answer and his brow wrinkled heavily as he debated with himself whether or not to ask if this was a place Alexander Wolfe had taken her and _made love to her._  
_Had she loved him?_  
It was a question that quickly consumed all others and while his brow softened his jaw remained tense – _did he want to know the answer to that?_

“Not him,” Felicity answered, reading his mind as she turned her hand under his to make their fingers entwine for only a second before she took it away and reached for the door handle.  
“Have you been here before?” he asked, knowing her answer would either allay his fears or add to them.  
“No,” she smiled as she opened the door.  
Oliver mentally chastised himself for not being quick enough to scoot around the car to open it for her, but when she flashed him a naked butt cheek as she lifted herself out of the car, he couldn’t help but be secretly okay with his lapse in chivalry.

He followed her around to the back of the car where the boot was popped just as the last hour of the late afternoon began to paint the sky brilliant shades of lavender and pink. He breathed the air in deeply, heavy with the scent of bark and moss, and blew the same out through his slightly cold lips.  
“Is there power inside?” he asked, shrinking back when she looked at him with a smile of amusement.  
“Do you need power Oliver?”  
Before he could come up with a witty response she was touching his neck in a way that felt beautifully intimate and dispelled his worries.  
“It has power, or at least that’s what she told me,” she laughed jubilantly, and it occurred to Oliver that she would have been just as unprepared as he was to stay in a cabin without power.

Once inside Felicity scanned the wall beside the door for anything that resembled a light switch and she sighed audibly when she found one.

The inside was thick with stale air as they walked around the quaint living area that was a kitchen, dining and living room all rolled into one. The inside looked far more modern than the outside and, as Oliver looked around at the carefully collected pieces of furniture, he realised the outside had been a ruse.

Felicity walked towards the large bi-fold doors and opened them up to let the chilled mountain air billow in from the balcony. There wasn’t much of a view, mostly just the mesmerising sway of pine trees and the dirt tracks that weaved their way through them, but as Oliver followed her outside and looked skyward, he theorised that at night the unpolluted sky gave the clearest show of stars he’d probably ever seen.

He left their bags at his feet as he thought for a moment about wrapping his arms around Felicity and pulling her back onto his chest, the way a couple might – the way he _wanted_ to, but before he could talk himself into, or out of, it, Felicity had wandered back inside.

He collected the bags once again and walked them to the chesterfield couch where he left them before following Felicity down a small, unlit hallway. There were four doors off the hallway, the first was a double linen closet. The next door on the left led to a large room that shared the same balcony as the living area and housed little more than a dresser and a large four-poster bed made of solid, red mahogany, with freshly made black linen.

It took Oliver a few minutes longer than Felicity to notice the artwork above the bed, but he smiled much more broadly than her when he did.

“You’re friend has interesting taste in artwork,” he beamed as he studied the three large sketches.

The cavasses were a black matte as were the frames that surrounded each one, and the painting themselves were simple white lines, but it was with each brush stroke that the artist had created beautiful imagery of couples engaged in sensual acts. Despite the somewhat simplistic nature of the colourless images, the intimacy of them was palpable.

“I believe they are custom made,” Felicity smiled as her eye was drawn to one in particular that – unlike the others – featured two women, “This will be my room,” she added as she set down her handbag on the padded glory box at the foot of the bed.

Oliver’s eyebrow twitched at the inference of her words – _they weren’t sharing a bed._  
“Your room?” he quizzed as she swanned past him, trailing along an invisible cloud of rosewater perfume and heady arousal.  
She smiled at Oliver in the doorway before he wordlessly followed her from the room towards the door almost opposite.  
“I thought we might be sharing a room,” he spoke cautiously as Felicity opened the door into a larger room with the same mottled, coffee-coloured oak floor.

“Oliver,” she smiled, before tongue swept from one corner of her lips to the other, “ _When_ we sleep, I think its best we sleep apart.”  
He nodded even though he wanted to shake his head at the unilateral decision she had made.  
“We will both _need_ our sleep,” she added as she walked backwards into the room and undid the first five buttons of her dress and exposing her ivory bra.

Oliver’s jaw dropped open and it took him a few seconds to wind it back into place as he walked two steps closer to her.  
“And will we be sleeping soon?” he asked as his hands twitched by the side of his thighs as her fingers poised over the sixth, and final, button on her dress.

She didn’t give him an answer either way before her hands fell from her dress and she turned around in the centre of the room.

It was decorated much like the other, although it boasted a larger bed – one you could fit at least 5 Oliver-sized people, and the posts were not wood but black steel, undoubtedly reinforced, with white drapes of silk chiffon at each end and two crossbars at the head of the bed set about two feet apart from each other.

It was a bed designed for a few purposes – most of which didn’t include _sleeping_.

The room was tastefully decorated in black embossed wallpaper, just like Felicity’s room. A large mirror framed in ornate pewter, hung, almost floor to ceiling, on the wall opposite the bed and was sandwiched between two double closets that Felicity could undoubtedly guess the contents of.

Different paintings, but in the same contextual form as the ones in the smaller room, decorated the wall alongside the door and above a roman-like chaise in charcoal leather. The opposite wall was free of any artwork but a large bi-fold door did run along most of its length and boasted a view from a private balcony of rolling mountains in the distance as this side of the forest dropped away steeper than the other balcony.

“I’m not tired,” Oliver spoke playfully with a Cheshire-grin as he followed Felicity towards the window panes that reminded him of the ones in his office he had yet to fuck her against – _as promised._  
She turned and caught both of his hands as they moved towards her waist.  
“First the rules,” she said with a slightly-authoritarian voice that had Oliver subconsciously groaning, “If you’re ever uncomfortable this can stop.”  
She let one of his hands loose and it sunk into her waist, “I’m not,” he insisted.  
“Oliver,” she pulled his hand from her body one finger at a time, “I need you to listen.”

He raised his hands in surrender and followed Felicity when she walked from the room and towards the last door at the end of the hall.

It was a bathroom, with the same wooden floors as the rest of the cabin but grey slate covered the two wall of the wet area and the vanity was made of white porcelain. A second door in the bathroom connected it to the master bedroom.

They spent only a little time in there and Oliver continued to follow Felicity like a dutiful puppy when she walked back into the neutral space of the living room.

“I’m listening,” he promised when she stopped near the stone surround of the log burner.  
“You can stop any of what happens here at any time and there would be no shame in it,” she continued, her smile just serious enough to make sure Oliver listened, “understood?”  
“Felicity, I understand that,” he replied with a casual nod, “I trust you.”

She found herself smiling at his response before she continued her terms, “I intend to test you Oliver. To take you to limits you might not have known you had, so while I appreciate your trust, I need you to know that it can stop at any time.”  
“I know.”  
He was trying to keep his face serious to show her that he was completely on board with this, but he couldn’t completely hold back the smile that had a hold of his lips when he became besotted with the way she commanded his attention and effortlessly held it.  
“Choose your safe word then,” she partitioned.  
He shrugged lithely “Memo?”  
She brushed a hand down his unshaven jaw and Oliver felt it throb between his legs, “Why don’t you choose something else?”

He searched the room with his eyes for a few moments before they landed on a travel magazine in the centre of the coffee table, “Aruba then.”  
She followed his eyes to the glossy imagery of a pristine beach and unoccupied hammock and smiled, “Aruba it is then.”

“So now we’ve gone over the terms of this weekend, what’s next?”  
He licked his lips as he studied hers, his every sense intent on kissing that pink, glossy pout every way possible – chastely, viciously, calmly, wildly, slowly, desperately – he’d take it all.  
  
“Go have a warm shower,” she instructed as she lifted his knit sweater and black crew neck tee off his body together, “Make sure it’s _quite_ warm Oliver, it will bring your blood to the surface and make your skin more sensitive as well as relaxing your muscles.”  
“You could join me to check the temperature?”  
She laughed softly, with plump and rosy cheeks, “I need to set up,” she replied as her eyes travel to the suitcase a short walk from their feet.  
“Set up?”  
She pecked his lips and left them brushing as she answered his enquiry, “Don’t worry Oliver, I’ll take care of you.”  
His fingers trawled slowly down her back as he leaned his forehead against hers, “I’m not worried.”

**The artwork is** **by Steve K, look him up, his stuff is amazing.**

****

 


	12. The Forbidden Flame

Oliver shook the beaded remnants of his shower from the shorts of his hair as he ran a slow and measured hand through them and smiled at himself in the fogged up mirror.  
  
It was a strange feeling, to know that you could relinquish control to another person but trust implicitly that they would keep you – and your secrets – safe. He was 6’2 and 180 lbs; facts that paled in comparison to Felicity’s measurements, but yet the excitement of letting go of any reins, of having her take him wherever she wanted; it was unlike any feeling he’d had before.  
  
Sure, women had come and gone but he had fallen into a ruse with them – he played the strong, stoic, silent type in life, most assumed he wanted the same role in sex. The few that realised he was Switch – if he happened upon someone who even knew what that was – were either confused by it or didn’t have the presence to command him in any sort of believable way; but Felicity… she was different. She understood him.  
  
He shook the towel through his hair and once more over his body before he secured it around his waist and took a measured breath while his hand hovered over the door handle.  
  
She understood him.  
  
When he stepped out and his bare feet squeaked one of the floorboards, Felicity looked up from the chaise at the foot of the bed and smiled. Oliver was less measured in his response to seeing her, biting his tongue to stop from choking it seconds after he picked his jaw up from the ground.  
  
She was dressed in an almost sheer black corset, boned and trimmed in satin ribbon. Tight straps criss-crossed over her waist and into a stocking garter that held up shimmering, sheer stockings. Leather fingerless gloves and tall, ice-pick patent leather shoes with chrome spikes running down the centre finished off the look.

  
“Are you ready Oliver?” she asked, holding a crop with an engraved silver handle vertical as her finger gently slid up the shaft of it. Once her finger reached the end she pulled back the tanned leather flap and somehow managed to make it crack in thin air.  
He swallowed heavily as he glanced down at the simple white towel around his waist, knowing an erection was growing behind it already, “Yes.”  
  
He found himself breathing in time with the _click, click, click-click_ of her stilettos as she walked up to him and raked her nails along his arm, until he took a short gasp when she found, with surgical precision, the exact spot on his shoulder that made his entire spine shiver like a shaken mould of jell-o.  
  
“Pardon?” her tone was smoky and rich and it made Oliver tease his tongue on the bow of his lips at hearing it.  
“Yes Miss Smoak.”  
She smiled at his correction as she gently retracted her nails from his skin, “That’s better,” she turned and took three deliberate steps away from Oliver before she turned back and with vivid red lips whispered, “Don’t make the same mistake twice.”  
  
With the end of the crop tapping her lips she smiled wickedly as she blinked down at the towel covering his modesty, despite the growing tent in it.  
  
“Off,” she ordered and Oliver obeyed, fervently pulling away the towel and throwing it to the corner of the room.  
  
He was quite the specimen and Felicity wasn’t sure she had ever truly taken the time to enjoy it, so now, while they stood a few feet apart, her shoes making her almost in line with his eyes, she studied him quite vigorously.  
  
The way his strong jaw cut into his firm neck before it sloped down into broad and sinewy shoulders, the cusps of which were like mountain ranges of large, plump muscles. His arms hung at his sides but they were anything but willowy as she followed the thick veins from his elbows to his wide wrists. His chest was still misted in a fine veil of water that caught the dim light in the room and made his lightly tanned complexion glisten. His stomach was taut and smooth, cut with deep valleys between each muscle on his stomach, which smoothed out into a thatch of hair and his throbbing member.  
  
Oliver stood under her heated gaze. Each muscle she studied twitched under her stare and he could feel the heat from her eyes as they slalomed down his taut chest. She wasn’t scarce with her silent adoration and, which it may have seemed somewhat narcissistic of him, having her stare at him like this was making his cock thrum.  
  
“Touch yourself,” she spoke in a tone that was neither brash nor mild, but sat somewhere in between the two.  
But he didn’t ask questions and he was surprised just how quickly his body reacted to her command as he wrapped one hand around the shaft of his semi-soft dick and gently pumped it while he kept his eyes on her.  
  
Her head moved from one shoulder to the other, wordlessly watching him, as the corners of her lips flurried out a smile and one eyebrow eased towards her hairline. He watched her drag the tip of the crop across her collarbone where the bone danced seductively under her porcelain skin as she rolled one shoulder, then the other.  
  
“Harder,” she instructed as she twirled the crop like a baton and tasted the top edge of the leather with her tongue.  
He obeyed, tugging himself with a tight fist, as he felt the blood rushing down his body and throbbing out the vein that ran the underneath his shaft.  
  
She watched as his body grew in his hand and his fist widened to accommodate it, with a lopsided smile on her painted ruby lips.  
“Stop.”  
The single command was echoed in her twirling the crop a second time and cracking in against her thigh. The sound was orgasmic to Oliver and he couldn’t stifle the very aroused groan that bubbled from his parted lips, but he halted his hand movement immediately in response. He could feel the blood throbbing under his stilled fingertips as he tensed every muscle down that entire arm.  
  
“Drop it.”  
He did and his cock bounced like a diving board in mid-air.  
She sauntered to close the gap, her thighs tightening and releasing through each step as the hand holding the crop swayed alongside.  
  
She crouched down in front of him and took the tip of his cock into a kiss while Oliver bit back a groan as the sensation took over him in a convulsion of nerves. Her tongue flirted with the tip as she balanced his shaft on the back of her hand.  
  
In slow motion she fed his cock into the warmth of her mouth while she continued to tease her tongue along his slit. Her hand took his base and gently pumped him against the roof of her mouth while Oliver fought every inclination he had to touch the billowing waves of his golden hair. He knew the rules, his hands only did as she requested.  
  
She could feel the tightness of his taint as she ran her finger from his rear to his throbbing balls. He was close, and the slight taste of salt on her tongue was evidence of that.  
  
She dropped him from her mouth and Oliver whimpered at the sudden loss of contact.  
  
She licked her top lip as she stood up, her body a hair’s breadth from his dripping tip, “Did you want to finish in my mouth?” she asked coyly as her fingers hovered the length of his shaft, making him imagine the sensation of her fingertips brushing over it.  
“Yes,” he strained to answer as the word came out through gritted teeth, _like I’ve wanted nothing else ever before_ his head thumped.  
Finally her fingers touched his skin and the instant they did the tenseness in his throat subsided just enough for a gratified sigh.

“Does it ache that you didn’t?” she enquired.  
He watched with hooded eyes as she swept a finger through the precum in his slit and raised it to her opened lips.  
  
“Yeee-ss,” he slurred, unable to blink away from the slow ascent of her finger to her mouth.  
Finally, she threaded her finger through her lips and smiled around, tasting the salty, thin taste of Oliver’s arousal, “Good,” she replied at the same time as she _popped_ the finger from her mouth.  
  
“On your knees,” she added with one hand on her waist and the other dragging down his jaw.  
He dutifully obeyed, sinking to his knees without a word.  
  
His eyes followed her until his head needed to move while she walked around the back of him, the same _click, click, click-click_ of her shoes now in time with the throbbing of his shaft.  
  
He felt her warm breath across his shoulders before her lips pecked the tiny red indentations she had left early. Her tongue swirled up to his pulse point, relishing the way it quickened under her attention.  
  
She kissed the back crease of his ear and blew with circles lips, warm air over the same spot before she nipped his lobe and whispered her next instruction, “Lie down on your chest.”  
Oliver winced at the idea, his cock was still rock hard and having it pushed against the hard floor would be tortuous.  
  
His hesitation cost him another nip on his lobe before he lowered his body towards the ground, but kept his hips slightly lifted.  
  
The ache was intense and shuddered down to his base where it flared up his core and down the front of his thighs. His breath became tight and erratic as he steadied his quaking forearms into the unyielding wood.  
  
She pushed the heel of her shoe into the plump round of his ass and nailed him to the floor. A rough and rasped cry burst from his mouth, without any consideration and while there was a sharp pain wracking his body, there was also something erotic about the sensation and he took it in gleefully.  
  
“Only stand up when you’ve gone soft,” she quipped, her heel still stuck into his fleshy rear like an ice pick, puckering the skin taut around it.  
“Yes Miss Smoak.”  
  
It took nearly ten minutes for Oliver to go soft and once he had Felicity instructed him to lie onto the bed with his wrist hanging over the edge. He obeyed wordlessly and, kneeling on the chaise, Felicity strapped on leather cuffs and tightened them until his lips flinched and she knew they were tight enough to be felt.  
  
“Move to the head of the bed,” she popped each word from her mouth as she walked around the edge.  
Oliver turned and crawled until his head was on a thin pillow and his hands were against the bar that ran between two of the bed posts.  
  
She took the chain between the cuffs and secured it to a clip on the bar before she tugged it to be sure of its strength. Satisfied with it being able to hold, Felicity shuffled down his body until she was straddled across his thighs.  
  
Her fingers teased the rim of his cockhead as she let him harden just enough to thread the surgical steel ring onto the base of his cock. The semi erection would hold Oliver in a state of limbo between release and denial until she deemed otherwise.  
  
To test her theory she slipped her tongue underneath his head and swallowed the first two inches of his cock into the warm confines of her mouth.  
  
Oliver’s eyes blew wide as they slid down the centre of his body to find Felicity, with wide cheeks and stretched lips, swallowing half his shaft. Gruff and panted breaths took him completely as blood thronged around the ring.  
  
The pain was so good and his incoherent mumbles of something similar, albeit laced with expletives, told Felicity all she needed to hear; the ring was working and with it on Oliver would be almost incapable of coming.  
  
She dropped him from her mouth with a deliciously loud plop before she slipped off the bed.  
  
“What colour are you Oliver?” she asked as she collected the crop as swayed it near her calf.  
“Green,” he smirked.  
The crack of the crop on the near exact centre of his chest had Oliver jerk his hips off the bed and his wrists buck wildly in the restraints. _Shit_ , she could wield that thing like no one he’d ever met and while a surprised tear grew at the corner of one eye and a red welt raised on the slight left of his eighth rib, Oliver felt nothing but unleashed pleasure and his hungered “Fuck,” attested to that.  
  
“What colour are you Oliver?” she asked a second time.  
“Green, Miss Smoak.”  
She tickled the crop across his balls and over his slight erection.  
“Do you like been smacked Oliver?”  
Without correlating the lesson he had just learned, or perhaps subconsciously he had, he answered with a hurried nod.  
  
The second crack was on his pelvis, a fraction above the base of his cock. The pain was sharper and the intensity of it had him blinking stars for at least fifteen seconds before he released the inside of his cheeks from his teeth’s vice grip and his vision sharpened.  
  
“Miss-iss Smoak,” bumbled from his mouth like cotton balls until he coughed them free, “Yes Miss Smoak.”  
  
Felicity dragged the tip of the crop down his engorged member before lightly flicking the end, which caused Oliver to reactively suck in a sharp breath of air. Then she walked towards the dresser where she had set something up that Oliver couldn’t quite make out in the dimly lit room.  
  
That was until she rolled her thumb over the wheel of the lighter and sparked a flame that she held over the wick of a thick white candle. The fragrant scent of vanilla filled the room and twirled seductively across Oliver’s senses making him hum lowly to himself.  
  
Felicity walked the fetish candle slowly towards the bed, smiling when the first drip of wax ran over her knuckles. The heat was mild, as it specifically burned at a low temperature, but it was enough to feel the bite of it for a few seconds until it hardened.  
  
Once she was straddled over the top of his thighs, Felicity held the candle to one side and licked a straight line up the centre of Oliver’s chest, delight colouring her eyes when his body rolled with her until she flicked off at the his collarbone and passed a warm breath across his lips before sitting back on his muscular thighs.  
  
She held the candle above the spot where her tongue had left off and tipped it gently so that the melted wax spilled down the centre of Oliver’s chest. His pecs twitched and his body reactively lurched against the restraints until the first, sharp stab of pain had subsided and Oliver revelled in the prickling heat left behind.  
  
“Colour?” she asked cautiously as she watched his eyes flutter through the raft of sensations.  
Oliver’s eyes snapped open to stare into hers with an intensity that forced her shoulders fractionally back, “Green Miss Smoak,” he answered, rasped but smiled, “and please may I have some more.”  
  
Felicity repeated the same action, barely a hair’s breadth from the other hardened half-inch-long trail. This time instead of gasping, Oliver growled out a gravelled purr as Felicity held it longer, making the sensation last as long as Oliver could handle.  
  
The cuffs slapped and grinded against the metal bar as Oliver’s body reactively thrashed against them, but he drunk in every second of it, every tiny spike of pain shot down his body and made his cock thrum against the inside of Felicity’s thighs. It was unlike anything he had experienced and the pleasure had him making noises he’d never heard.  
  
“Oliver?” Felicity asked attentively as his eyes began to roll backwards.  
He tugged them forward and met her concern with a lopsided smirk, “Please more, Miss Smoak.”  
  
Oliver craved it, everything about that moment was like the release of a secret he’d kept for so long.  
  
The relinquishment of control.  
The way his nerves fired incessantly.  
The way his body writhed and fought reactively as his sexual appetite and mind flourished.  
It was everything he’d wanted, but had never been able to ask for.  
  
Felicity moved the candle across his chest, alternating between short, sharp drops of wax at a distance close enough to warm his skin with the flame and long ribbons of wax that ran through the crevices between his taut stomach muscles, all while watching the pleasure excite his expression and quicken his breath.  
  
Watching him take it, experience it, and find a deep and carnal pleasure from it had Felicity’s own sex aching as her folds became slick and warm with her arousal.  
  
She leaned up his chest, kissing spots where the wax hadn’t hardened in place before she fed the lit candle into one of Oliver’s clenched fists.  
  
“Hold this for me,” she smiled before her fingers traced the rivers of wax back down his chest until they reached the base of his cock.  
  
He could feel himself swelling under the confines of the steel ring and when Felicity loosened it just a fraction a decadent sigh bled from his lips while more blood flowed and grew his erection from a semi to a sinewy throb of veins and taut skin.  
  
With the ring still in place, Felicity parted her panties to one side and sliced his cock between her folds while she patted her lips together and she relished in the indulgent sensation of hard against soft, before she slipped him slowly inside her entrance.  
  
Oliver gulped back a hedonistic groan as the head of his cock was swallowed into her warm and cushiony seat. Her hips rocked slowly, easing him in until he was fully buried and the ridge of the ring skirted her entrance. Her eyes lapsed while she gently circled her hips, sweeping his tip around her walls and skimming the smooth, cool steel of the ring against her pebbled clit.  
  
He watched her intently, the intensity of the wax dripping over his fingers combined with the slow tease of her grinding hips had him all but levitating off the bed as his toes twisted in the linen to keep himself from thrusting, knowing he hadn’t been given permission to.  
  
Felicity’s thumbs dug into Oliver’s navel as she steadied herself with her fingers splayed either side of his waist before she lifted off him and tucked her knees in closer. Holding her body just above his, but with the tip of his girded erection still inside, Felicity leaned across his body and plucked the dripped candle from his hand.  
  
Every inch of Oliver wanted to surge his pelvis towards the ceiling, slamming himself deep inside Felicity as she impishly smiled at him, as though she could read those very thoughts. His thighs ached and his toes felt numb as they strangled themselves in the black satin sheets. His breath was ragged and stretched and his mouth felt dry as he could focus on nothing but staying completely still, despite his desperate desire not to.  
  
She held the candle above his body and tapped her painted nail against the edge, which made puddles of the heated wax splash onto his washboard stomach. He jerked, quite reactively, as his smiled matched hers before he bit his lips to still the words he wanted to say.  
  
“Speak pet,” she ushered and Oliver dropped his lip from his teeth, “what do you want?”  
_Tap, tap, tap_ , the wax burned the skin around his nipples quite deliciously.  
“I want to,” he gritted his teeth as the next drip landed in the dip of his clavicle, “…to fuck you Miss Smoak.”  
  
She smiled as she gave the tiniest of bucks forward with her hips, taking barely a fraction more of his length inside her but making him whimper with enjoyment.  
  
“Beg Oliver,” she replied, a devilishly coquettish smile purging her lips, “tell me how much you want it.”  
_Tap, tap-tap,_ the wax pooled around his bellybutton.  
“Please Miss Smoak, allow me to make you wet.”  
She petted his jaw with her free hand, “How wet will you make me Oliver?”  
His tongue peaked out between his lips, before he answered with hungry eyes and a smoky tone, “gushing.”  
  
She blew the candle out and spilled the last remnants of wax into the deep V that cut down from his waist before she discarded the candle to the side of the bed and coiled her wrists around satin ties that hung from either side of the bed canopy.  
  
Once, twice, three times she wrapped the black fabric around her snowy-white wrists before her fists tightened in the taut sashes and made her arms into a stretched V. When she was well positioned and her knees were anchored into the mattress either side of Oliver, she flirted her tongue at the edge of her smiling lips and dropped her head to one shoulder.  
  
“Go,” she breathed, barely above a whisper and Oliver bucked like a racehorse out of the gate.  
With his feet now flat on the bed and his knees bent, he engaged every core muscle he possessed and thrust himself upwards to slam deep inside her. Her knuckles whitened around the bands as she held her weight above him, making Oliver work for every inch that drove inside her.  
  
Adrenaline and carnality throbbed through Oliver’s veins as he focused everything he hand on making her come.  
  
The desire to touch her thrumming clit was a most delicious torture in itself and Felicity could see the same desire threaded through Oliver’s azure eyes. Her breasts bounced underneath the tight bodice as she kept her spine straight despite her desperation to kiss, touch and enjoy Oliver like they had before.  
  
But it was the denial of such wants that made her climax so all-encompassing that when it hit suddenly and forcefully during a particularly deep thrust that made her entrance swell with the cool, rigid cock ring, Felicity released the silk ties and sunk into Oliver as her body tumbled forward.  
  
Her breath hitched in her throat as her eyes squeezed closed and her warm, decadent release coated Oliver, tip to base. She trembled through her climax with her forehead pressed to his stomach, moving up and down with each uneven breath Oliver took as he gently rolled his cock around inside her, as through stirring her through her release.  
  
He wanted so desperately to join her, to come with her at that precise moment but the ring banded around his cock wouldn’t allow it and instead Oliver focused on the hot breaths she misted against his stomach and the way her pleasure had been his goal.  
  
When her head finally lifted off his chest her cheeks were flushed a radiant pink and her bottom lip bore tiny indents from where her teeth had ravished it. Her eyes were hooded and sweat had made her eyeliner shadow under her eyes which made the bright blue of them even more haunting. Her forehead was damp with their sweat and strands of hair were glued in place and darkened in colour with the same.  
  
She looked fucking beautiful and he had to seal his mouth closed to stop his secret from escaping.  
_He loved her._  
  
A few languid moments passed before Felicity slid off him, making a deliriously wet noise as his cock, still hard and unspent, slipped out from inside her, coated in her glistening release, “You did good,” she cheered breathily as her eyes dragged from his eyes to the clock, “But it’s late.”  
  
Oliver instinctively whimpered at the loss of pressure as Felicity slid off his thighs, and the bed. She smiled at the begging expression painted across his face while she ruffled her fingers through his hair.  
“I’ll clean up and then tend to you,” she continued her eyes trailing down the now cracked rivers of wax and the sheen of her release on his member, “you won’t be allowed to touch yourself this weekend Oliver, do you understand?”  
Ignoring the desperation of his throbbing dick, Oliver nodded, “Yes Miss Smoak, I understand.”  
“Good pet,” she winked before she leaned over the bed and pecked his lips with a delicate kiss.  
“Miss Smoak?” Oliver pleaded with wide and wild eyes as she pulled her face away from his.  
“Yes?”  
“Please, allow me to clean you up?” he asked with gravelled words before he licked the outline of his mouth.  
  
“Seeing as you said please,” Felicity hummed as she crawled back onto the bed, her knees either side of his head and her pinkish lips brushing his mouth. She held onto the same bar Oliver was handcuffed too for support as his tongue expertly lapped the spend first from her thighs before he dipped his tongue into her folds.  
  
The slow, methodical sweep of his tongue combined with the growl from his throat that reverberated his lips made Felicity shudder and thrash her hips against his mouth.  
  
Oliver quickened the sweeps of his tongue to match as her sweet elixir coated his lips and tickled his tongue while her heady scent filled his nose. He made swerves of slow circles around her clit, in movements that exactly replicated what Felicity had craved to feel moments before.  
  
Each twist and turn of his tongue made Felicity pant excitedly until her body was a shivering of nerves while her body was hurtling towards her second orgasm of the night. Her body clenched around emptiness before Oliver dipped his tongue into her entrance and seconds later he felt her rich, creamy release coat his tongue, blanch his lips and slip down his throat.  
  
He sucked and swept the entire length of her sex, taking every last offering she had until Felicity slid her tongue-bathed sex down his chest and kissed her own spend from his glistening lips.  
  
“Thank you pet,” she ghosted almost silent words against his lips.  
“Thank you Miss Smoak,” he cooed after he smacked his lips lewdly together.  
  
After Felicity disappeared into the bathroom Oliver let his eyes softly close with a smile taped to his mouth. His shoulders were beginning to ache as his wrists hung from the cuffs and while the throb of his erection was beginning to dull, the ache was now lingering in his balls, but neither of those things could steal the completely enveloping feeling of euphoria that had him smiling like a fool.  
  
He lost track of time with his eyes lidded and his breathing calm and measured but when he finally opened them Felicity was dressed in a pink tank top and grey cotton pants, drawn tightly with a pink string at the waist. She was breath-taking and for a moment Oliver considered she was merely a sleepy pleasure-tipped apparition until she unbelted the cuffs and dabbed a warm face cloth to the red strangle marks left on his wrists.  
  
He let her tend to him without words, but with his eyes completely enamoured with her face; the natural blush of her cheeks, the dark lashes that fluttered against porcelain skin, the peach of her pouted lips and the deep blue pools of kind eyes that Oliver would happily drown himself in.  
  
Carefully she dipped the face cloth into a bowl of warm water and squeezed out the excess before she lay the soft grey towelling over the top of Oliver’s chest, warming the wax for a count of twenty seconds that Felicity silently counted, her lips forming perfectly around each number.  
  
At twenty she lifted the cloth and carefully pulled the softened wax free. Some caught the finer hairs on Oliver's chest but the tweak of pain didn’t bother him, not while he was swimming in those eyes of hers.  
  
She repeated each step half a dozen times until the wax was nothing more than a sensual memory Oliver vowed never to forget; the bite, the smell, the feeling... it was all his to treasure.  
  
She lifted another bowl of water with a little soap floating in bubbles on the surface onto the bed after putting the other on the ground. A gentle smile tugged one corner of her lips higher than the other as she dipped the edge of another matching face cloth into the water and dabbed the corners of his mouth, his nose and the crest of his chin and jaw.  
  
“Do you like the bite of pain Oliver?” she asked as she flooded the cloth with the warm soapy water and wrung it out.  
“Yes Miss Smoak,” Oliver replied like an affirmation he could finally admit.  
She swept the cloth over the base of his softened cock, the ring now sitting loose on it, “I’m out of costume Oliver, it’s just me.”  
“Then, Yes, Felicity,” her name was like a breath from his lips, soft and slightly rasped.  
  
“Does that scare you? To be turned on by pain?” she asked as she continued to gently clean him, careful not to arouse his cock any more than necessary.  
He blinked down his own chest before he sighed, “It used to,” his eyes rose to study hers, “Does it scare you?”  
She smiled, without a hint of anything but kindness, “No Oliver it doesn’t and your desires are safe with me.”  
“What is it you want?” he asked, adamant whatever her reply he would make it his mission to give it to her.  
“You already discovered one that night at the club,” she answered coyly.  
“I want to discover more,” he vowed.  
She met his eyes and blinked away, almost bashful, “In time,” she said as she looked across his body, happy he was clean enough for now.  
  
When she took the two bowls into the bathroom Oliver sat up on the edge of the bed and ran a tentative hand through his hair, he wanted to ask her to stay with him that night, to lie with him, let his arms envelop her arm body, _he wanted to hold her._  
  
“You’re leaving?” he asked when she came back into the room with a dry towel she offered him.  
“It’s late and we still have to look someone bright eyed tomorrow for the tour,” she explained as she packed away the leather cuffs and the cooled candle, “But just in case you get any ideas.”  
  
He could hear the smile in her tone as she walked back towards him with something shiny in her hands. She tapped his knees and Oliver opened them before she knelt between them and tightened the ring before she threaded his soft cock into a stainless steel cage and clipped the two together, locking it with a brass padlock.  
  
“Does it feel comfortable?” she asked as she checked the chastity cage didn't strangle his shaft.  
“As comfortable as a cage on my dick could feel, sure,” he answered with a laugh.  
Felicity stood and dropped the key into her back pocket.  
“Don't lose that,” he winked as Felicity opened the bedroom door.  
She hung from the frame and turned her head over her shoulder, “Good night Oliver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Play it safe guys.  
> Low temp scented candles:
> 
> https://kjcanes.com/shop/index.php/product/bdsm-wax-play-pillar-candle/


	13. The Burning Frost

Oliver woke up sometime just before 7am with the sun streaming in through the blind-less windows as it sliced through the thicket of trees. His lips smacked together in a smile as he let both his eyes and his imagination wander out into the isolated forest. He imagined Felicity and him owning their own place not too dissimilar to this, but with touches of their own lining the walls and perhaps it would sit at the base of a snow-tipped mountain instead of a national park, but either way, it would be their retreat for when their lives were stressed and they ached for a place where they could be themselves.

His legs restlessly moved in the bed and his smile dampened when he remembered he was alone in the vast mattress and Felicity was the shortest – but _longest_ – walk away, just across the hall instead of asleep beside him where his chin could nuzzle into her warm neck and he could rouse her with tiny kisses along the ridge of her shoulder.

He groaned at his allowance of that momentary idyllic dream which he had no business thinking about it. She hadn’t loved Alexander Wolfe – a man undoubtedly better suited to her calibre than Oliver – so the idea that she might just harbour feelings for him the way he nurtured them for her, was wholly incorrigible, _hopeless_.

With a heavy sigh he twisted his head away from the window – and all the whimsical thoughts it had conjured up – and stared at the red lights of the alarm clock instead, at least until he noticed the small key sitting on the bedside table next to it.

He considered for a moment unlocking the cage around his cock and relieving the tension that he could feel between his legs, but after what Felicity showed him last night he didn’t want to lose himself to his left hand.

One cold shower later he found Felicity in the kitchen, nursing an aromatic cup of coffee. He sauntered in, dressed in a crisp suit with a baby blue silk tie draped around his neck and the two top buttons on his white shirt unfastened.

“It’s fresh and hot,” Felicity smiled as she nodded towards the percolator on the stovetop.  
Oliver meandered deeper into the room before he placed a gentle kiss at the crook of her neck where her lightly fragrant perfume danced across his senses.  
“What was that for?” Felicity asked, watching him over the rim of her cup as he walked around her to the stove and poured himself a coffee.  
“Call it a thank you,” he hummed, unable to wipe the smile from his lips, “for last night,” he added, though the clarification was unnecessary.

“I didn’t scare you away?” she chortled, her doe eyes as wide as saucers and deceptively innocent.  
Oliver fossicked in the pocket of his graphite-grey trousers until he found the small golden key and lightly _tapped_ in onto the table before he slid it the few inches closer to Felicity.  
“Far from it,” he answered with a throaty gravel in his voice as he placed his coffee cup on the same table.

Felicity collected the small key from the oak table and feathered it between her fingers, “So you unlocked?” she asked coyly.  
“No Miss Smoak,” he replied as he sunk to his knees in front of her and kissed the corner crease of her bent knee, “Only you unlock me.”  
His lips melted into the warm skin of her thighs as his languid kisses rose up her leg. Felicity raked her nails across his scalp to his crown where her finger’s fisted in his hair and she forced his head up.  
“Will you wear it the whole day?”

Oliver patted his lips silently together, wetting them before he answered smoothly, “Does that please you?”  
“It excites me,” she answered as she batted her long, dark lashes against her lightly powdered cheeks and rolled her fingers down his jaw before she lifted his chin and leaned in a little closer to his face, “Would you like to see?”

He nodded gingerly and Felicity guided his hand up her silken thighs to allow just the tips of his fingers to brush through her folds. They were wet and slippery and Oliver snapped his mouth closed mid-sigh.

A throbbing at the base of his cock, for a moment, made his head foggy for any other thought than the idea of her luscious pink, fleshy folds wet with her arousal; and the only question on his mind sprung from his lips, “May I please you Miss Smoak?”

Felicity tapped her finger to her lips, drawing out the palpable excitement that was thick in the air before she shimmied her beige dress up around her waist, opened her legs wider and tipped her hips upwards, “You may.”

* * *

  
At the QC warehouse Felicity was like a wide-eyed child in a toy story as their guide, a one Cisco Ramone, ferried them around with an effervescent excitement that _almost_ matched Felicity’s. So enamoured he’d become with watching the excitement leak from every pore on her expression, that Oliver almost forgot Felicity wasn’t wearing a scrap of underwear under her dress and he was wearing a cage on his dick; not to mention the fading chaff marks on his wrists and red lines on his stomach, but it was the culmination of these secrets between them that pulled an amused smile to the corner of his lips.

Once they had been given the _lay of the land,_ Cisco led them to a small table against a wall that was almost completely sheltered by walls of tech and equipment. It was metal and when Oliver pulled the chair out for Felicity the sound of it scraping against the concrete floor echoed quite painfully off the walls of the cavernous warehouse.

“Sorry,” Cisco grimaced as he tapped one of the three piles of manila folders on a nearby table, “We don’t have any fancy offices here and we actually didn’t expect _you_ , you, to come all the way down to see us,” he continued while his other hand stretched out the hem of his _Aquaman_ tee shirt.  
“This is perfectly fine, thank you,” Oliver remarked cordially as he noted the level of privacy the shelves around them provided.  
“There is a candy machine in the breakroom which … is…,” he lifted up onto the tips of his slightly scuffed burgundy Converse shoes and pointed into the far distance of the warehouse, “…over there somewhere.”  
“Duly noted,” Oliver smiled, the charm pouring off him like a Politian and Felicity noted that it wasn’t any surprise his mother was preening him to be the _face_ of the company – after all, he had the face for it.

“I’ll just be around,” Cisco continued as he waved his arms in the space around his waist, “so if you need anything just _call out_ ,” he spoke the last two words louder and they echoed off the steel structure beams to prove his point, “…because it echoes in here and I’ll be able to hear you.”  
  
“Before you go, are these the up-to-date records?” Olive queried as he nodded towards the three piles Cisco was hovering near.  
“Oh right, yes, someone in middle management has put them into three categories, liabilities,” he slapped the first, larger pile with his palm, “Money makers,” the second, slightly smaller pile got the same treatment, “and gambles,” the third pile came with a forlorn smile.  
Oliver felt a sigh bubbling up his throat, which he managed to suppress as he looked at the job in front of them, _although that did mean hours of making love-sick eyes across the table at Felicity while she wasn’t looking._

“Thank you Cisco,” Oliver jutted out his hand for the young genius to shake but, not comprehending the gesture, Cisco fist-bumped him before he sauntered away.

It was about 12 files and 1 hour later that Oliver lightly batted Felicity’s foot with the side of his. She looked up from her work and smiled.  
“Are you bored already?” she quipped while Oliver feigned his hurt.  
“What do you think of this place?” he asked, wanting to see the spark that twinkled in her eyes.  
“I think,” she breathed wistfully, “Queen Consolidated is lucky to have some brilliant people working for it, because the minds that come up with these sorts of thing…” her voice trailed off into a sigh.  
“Like yours?”

He knew she was too smart for the job she had and for probably anything he could offer her within the entire company; and for a moment that felt a lot like a gut punch, Oliver had the sudden, crippling feeling that she might one day outgrow him, he just didn’t know in how many different ways.

She smiled but shook her head softly, “Hardly, this kind of research and development really isn’t my forte.”  
“So what is?”  
“A little more computer sciences a little less,” she picked up a folder which contained the specs for a stretchy, Kevlar polymer fabric, “…physics.”  
“What would you do in my position?” he enquired as he looked around at the piles they hadn’t touched.

Felicity looked around one of the shelves to where Cisco was mulling about and Oliver turned in his seat to see the same, “I would trust the people who know better.”

Oliver called Cisco over and in less than the time it would take to pick a seed from a tooth, Cisco was rocking, heel-toe, in front of the table.  
“What would you save?” Oliver asked astutely.  
Cisco delved his hands into his pockets and shrugged, “I don’t really have a mind for business.”  
“I didn’t ask you for that reason,” Oliver remarked, “You can leave the business side of it to me, I’m after the passion, the inside scoop, _the heart_.”

Cisco spent barely two minutes looking through the folders before he found five; two from liabilities, two from gambles and one from money makers.  
“Now,” Oliver said as he looked at the five folders in front of him, “tell me why.”

* * *

  
After they were virtually the last people left standing at the warehouse and Cisco hinted that if they wanted to stay longer he could give them the key, Felicity and Oliver decided to call it a day and return to their haven in the woods.

They grabbed take out from a Japanese restaurant nearby and, while evening blanketed the small cabin in a deep, dark night and an assortment of twinkling stars, they found themselves nestled inside on the rug by the warm and roaring fire, eating donburi and drinking sake.

“What we did at the club,” Oliver started, the slightly warmed rice wine loosening his tongue and his inhibitions, “Did you ever with _him_?”  
Felicity finished the last drops in the bottom of her traditional soapstone cup.  
“No,” she answered softly as her hand feathered through the loose waves in her hair before brushing against the arm of her glasses, “in some ways he's not unlike you.”

She poured them both another drink before she slipped her glasses from her face and placed them at the very edge of the stone hearth.

Oliver took another drink, sighing as it smoothly snaked down the back of his throat, “He doesn’t strike me as the jealous type.”  
“He isn’t, _wasn’t_ ,” she said while her fingers tweaked at the soft twill tufts of the thick rug, “and while I’m sure if I had requested it, he would have given me his blessing to do it with someone else, the who was more important to me.”  
She blinked down from the intensity of Oliver’s gaze as the orange glow of the fire’s licks deepened the passion of his expression beyond what she would allow herself to feel.

“Were you with other men when you were with him?”  
Oliver wasn’t sure he wanted the answer, because a _yes_ might open up the path for her to want the same from him; and he wasn’t sure he could offer the woman he loved the freedom she might want.  
“He offered it, but no, I was never with another man when I was with him.”  
Oliver bit back his reflexive sigh before it could escape and give him away, but one question lingered in his mind, “Why would he offer you that?”  
The idea of sharing Felicity with someone else would drive him to the brink of insanity and yet, without her asking for it, Alexander had seemingly offered her the openness to do just that.

Felicity hesitated with her answer, she had never really asked Wolfe that question but rather she had come to her own conclusion when he had promised her that she _need only ask_ and he would step back to allow her any experience she wanted – _but for one._  
“My age probably,” she answered honestly, “I was young and although not naive, I think he wanted to make sure he wasn’t taking any freedoms from me.”  
“Was he?”

Felicity chuckled softly as she finished her drink and poured them both another, the count now somewhere nearing 7.  
“No, he opened me up to know myself. To appreciate that what I wanted wasn’t wrong or to be discouraged and that, provided both parties are willing, sex could be anything you wanted it to be.”

She smiled at the way Oliver’s cheeks reddened with her words.  
“Am I making you uncomfortable talking about him?” she asked as her hand sought out Oliver’s hand on instinct alone.  
He took her hand and gently squeezed it.  
“No,” he breathed, almost a laugh, “in fact the more I come to know about you Felicity, the more I think I owe the man an apology and a case of the finest whiskey.”  
“He would ask for neither,” she chuckled, “but appreciate the sentiments of both I suspect.”

Their fingers entwined as their bodies inched closer.  
“You really have nothing to worry about Oliver, but he will always be a part of my life and I need you to know that.”  
Oliver smiled softly, maybe she hadn’t meant it that way, but there was something in her words that gave him the hope that _this, **them** ,_ had the ability to stretch on past a phase; perhaps she saw a future in them too.

“I know that, and I want you to know that I respect that.”  
Her smiled brightened and widened and Oliver saw in that moment that those words had meant the world to her – _he wouldn’t be caught measuring dicks again._

“Tell me a secret Oliver,” Felicity whispered as her eyes soaked up the way his lips softly folded in around his tongue while she sat up on her knees and the rice wine took some of her inhibitions too.

“I want to know what he did for you,” Oliver whispered as his fingers twisted in tendrils of her hair that fell loose around her shoulders, “what you enjoyed.”  
“And if I tell you, what then?”  
Her voice was soft, and faded off at parts which made Oliver lean a little closer until their mouths shared the same air.  
“Maybe I could learn something,” his voice quivered in his throat, but this moment was about honesty – _almost complete_ apart from his secret he couldn’t share, not just yet.

“[He liked to watch me Oliver](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14196783/chapters/33497616),” she answered him with her lips brushing across his.  
“With what?” Oliver growled against her lips as his fingers tightened around her hand, each breath she took that misted against his lips was like sexual accelerant to the fire in his groin.  
“Just me and sometimes something to help me along the way,” she reminisced as images of her past mixed with fantasies of the present.  
“Like what?” Oliver felt his voice growing thin and stretched and the words came out so needy as his heart rate tripled as he wanted to experience that kind of moment, watching her.  
“Anything really, the standard sex toys, my hand, some other more interesting things,” she spoke softly and a chuckle lightly framed her words before she looked him dead in the eyes and raised one brow, “Would you like to watch me Oliver?”

 _She read his fucking mind_.  
“Yes,” he stammered.

A few minutes later and Oliver was tied to his chair with his baby blue tie on one side and a pair of her black stockings on the other. His shirt was hanging open and she had already bathed his taut chest in happy little kisses.  
“It’s a pity I didn’t bring any chains,” she winked before she started off towards the kitchen.  
“You really think I want to escape?” Oliver jested as he watched her hips sway with each feline-like step she took.  
“Good point,” she called over her shoulder before she disappeared from his view.

She returned a few moments later in the same scarlet robe she had put on after they returned from the warehouse, but now carrying a silver ice bucket filled half way with cubes that she placed on the coffee table.

Felicity dipped her index finger into the ice bucket and held it there until the precipice between pain and numbness shook her hand and she slowly withdrew the finger, now an almost translucent red. She brushed the same finger across Oliver's lips, making him shudder and an unexpected gasp to fall from between them. His tongue coiled around her finger with absent words and wide eyes.

“Do you want to suck my finger Oliver?”  
It was a question that outside this moment or outside these safe walls, it would be bizarre but here, with Felicity, it felt like a natural question with an even simpler answer.  
“Yes Miss Smoak.”

When she didn’t withdraw from him, Oliver took that as her approval to his request and he slowly hollowed his cheeks while he sucked her slender finger into his mouth. She kept it still, with a smile flirting with the corner of her own mouth, as Oliver's tongue toyed with the tip of her finger, circling and batting it from side to side. With his lips puckered around her finger he began to suck, slowly at first until he felt the carnal need to speed up.

Her icy skin began to warm in his mouth and the chill on his tongue soon dissipated. It wasn’t the act itself that was sexual by nature but the way they could both tease and toy and test each other without judgment or recoil that was truly the most sensuous feeling imaginable.

Her finger popped from his mouth, “Now it’s my turn.”  
She took a cube of ice from the bucket and slipped it into her mouth, smiling around it while the chill instantly swept over her tongue and the insides of her cheeks.

She loosened his belt and shimmied the top of his trousers and briefs down just far enough to release his cock, swelling in its cage. While the ice continued to melt in her mouth she unlocked him and Oliver sighed at the sudden relief before his blood thumped towards his almost immediate erection.

When her mouth was significantly frigid she slipped the much smaller cube from her mouth and stroked it along the underside of Oliver's shaft, avoiding both the tip and the balls. Oliver gripped the edge of the chair arms, turning his knuckles white as he took in hurried and stunted breaths.

It was a juxtaposition of sensations, on the one hand stroking his cock made him moan warmly, but the ice stunned his cock into a state of limbo. It tingled and made his body shiver reactively but the feeling was exciting and he found himself moaning for more.

It was then that Felicity knelt down in front of Oliver and took his head into her icy mouth. A litany of curse words peppered through Oliver's short breaths as Felicity took him hard and fast into her mouth. Her tongue slipped through his slit and rolled around the head while her hand closed around the base of his cock with the slither of ice sandwiched between her hand and the top of his dick.

She pumped in time with the suck of her hollowed cheeks as Oliver squeezed his eyes tightly and growled her name from the deep recesses of his chest. Water coated his shaft making it sloppy and wet and completely frictionless as Felicity bobbed her mouth down his length until she dropped his hard cock from her mouth and watched in bounce twice like a rigid log.

The denial wasn’t of his own making that time as the ice kept him from nearing climax despite the desperate need he had to orgasm and he could only manage a soft whimper when Felicity stood up.

She walked to the coffee table and lay a large towel across it after she put the ice bucket on the floor beside it.

Turning back to face Oliver she slowly untangled the knot at the front of her silk robe and then let it drop like a cascade of water from her body. Oliver blinked at the sight of her, her porcelain skin, smooth and curvaceous. Her willowy arms draped at her side and skimming the soft slopes of her hips before they pulled in tight to a narrow waist. She was naked apart from an ivory bra with delicate lace and tiny pink, floral accents. It was something out of the depths of Oliver's fantasies, one of them at least, as the innocence of it masked the libidinous nature of their tryst.

She sat on the edge of the coffee table, close enough to Oliver so when she stretched out her leg she could touch the inside of his upper thigh, and, at a stretch, touch the tip of his erect member. She crossed her legs at the knee and let the top one sway back and forth as Oliver drunk in the sight of her.

“You’re beautiful,” he crooned, although had his mouth be willing to give his mind a little time to come out of the haze, he would have thought of something much more debonair to say.  
Felicity touched the side of her neck with two fingers as her cheeks lightly blushed.

She picked up a cube of ice and held it between two fingers while she let the frigid water drool down towards her wrist before she lightly traced the length of her collarbone with the tip. Oliver found himself snacking on his lower lip as the water beaded or, in parts, made small trails of water down towards the slope of her breasts. After holding the ice at her sternum Felicity let it go and gasped as it ran it’s own, unaided path down between her breasts and lodged in her bra. She left it there to melt as she took a second one in her fingers and ran it slowly down the threads of her throat.

Oliver’s breathing was a mess, short and frantic snips of air, dispersed with long, drawn out sighs and inhales that sounded almost pneumonic.

With two cubes now melting between her breasts and rivers weaving down her skin, Felicity took another, larger, cube and leaned back on one elbow. Holding the cube between two fingers she slalomed the melting sphere down her stomach, weaving from one side to the other until she reached her navel.

She hadn’t asked a question but Oliver found his head bobbing in agreement regardless, as he begged her with his lidded gaze to uncross her legs and pass the cool, wet object between her pink and swollen lips.

She uncrossed her legs and spread them wide moments before Oliver moaned, unashamed of his longing, and his wrists twisted in the ties, _perhaps he needed chains to restrain him after all._

As she passed the ice gently between her folds Felicity shuddered and a breath hitched in her throat at the contact. It was intense and euphoric and she had to focus everything she had to gently sweep it around her coiled clit.

“Tell me what you feel Miss Smoak, please,” Oliver stumbled, his tone thin and his words shaky.  
“It’s sharp,” she moaned almost breathless, “like tiny prickles against my skin. I can feel it melting, wetting every inch of me in frigid water.”

Her head tipped back and rocked as she spoke while her thick and honey-toned hair swayed against the back of her arms and pooled like golden spool on the table.

“Do you enjoy it?” Oliver asked with rasped and thin words.  
Her head snapped up and her eyes widened, “Yes.”  
His heart thundered behind his chest as his breath quickened, “Will you come?”

She held her finger in the midst of the ice, letting it chill the digit until the biting temperature became too much. Taking the same finger, she dragged it slowly down her core, over her mound and dipped it between her folds, making her body reactively shiver around her finger even as she held it at the edge of her entrance.  
“I want to,” she sobbed as her shoulders shook forward while her finger plunged into her warm cavern.  
The chill was sudden and overwhelming and Felicity felt her entire core scrunch inwards, pulling her navel to her spine like some twisted Pilates position. The finger didn’t feel like her own but for the slender size of it, and she felt herself humming breathily as she worked her body towards a frenzy.

Oliver could feel the cords of his neck tightening as his entire body became rigid with need. Watching her body wracked with pleasure, all he could think about was how much he wanted to be amidst it, and the guttural grow that emanated from the pit of his stomach attested to that.

He could feel the binds marking and chaffing his skin but he didn’t care as he fought to be closer if not to touch her. He wanted to help knowing she was so close because he could smell her heady scent permeating the air, but with the same amount of devotion he wanted to simply watch Felicity come undone around her own attentions; and when the second desire slightly tipped the scales on the first – despite the throbbing cock sandwiched between his thighs – he egged her on with a animalistic groan, “Come, Miss Smoak, let me see you.”

Felicity bit into the side of her lower lip as her hips trembled and her walls convulsed before she came apart around her warming digit.

Oliver watched intently as the finger she had once vigorously pumped inside herself, eased off and was glistening with a slick gloss down to the third knuckle. He could only imagine the slip-stream of frictionless motion she must have been feeling as she gently slowed her rhythm to ease herself through.

Her nether lips were flushed a lush, almost tropical, pinky-peach and Oliver found himself wiping his tongue back and forth across his lower lip as he imagined the sweetness of it; while he wondered whether it would be slightly chilled by the currents of ice water that ran between her thighs.

Felicity stilled her finger completely before she slowly eased it out and sat back up on the edge of the coffee table. She could feel the heat radiating under her cheeks and her lip was red at the corner where she had chewed on it. Before she could wipe her finger clean on the towel, Oliver _hmmm-d_ and opened his mouth like a waiting baby bird.

She tapped her finger to his lip and left just a spot of her spend behind which Oliver quickly lapped up.  
“More please Miss Smoak,” he grinned wantonly and Felicity was in no mind to deprive her perfect little _bottom_ of his meal.  
She left her finger on his lip and within seconds Oliver had sucked it into his mouth and was lathing his tongue every which angle across it to be sure nothing was left.

“Good pet,” she smiled as she slipped her tongue-bathed finger from his mouth and ruffled her other hand over his unshaven jaw.  
Oliver’s lips twisted into a debauched smirk before he replied, “but I want to be bad.”  
She knew what that meant and while the night was well along, they still had a little time to play with.

Leaving him restrained and slightly hunched in the chair, Felicity left the room to return a few minutes later, still dressed in her nude pumps, the delicate ivory bra and a smile, only now she was swinging a crop near her ankle. She stood in front of him, her legs at a wide stance and the crop held between her legs like a croquet mallet.

“What turns you on Oliver?” she asked as she rocked from one hip to the other.  
“Pain,” Oliver admitted, though the thin voice he spoke with sounded almost unrecognisable to him, maybe because for _once_ it was truly honest.

She slapped the tip of the crop against the top of his thigh and Oliver reflexively sucked in a sharp breath of air before a smile grew across his lips.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, her tone soft but almost monotonous, as this exercise was about his answers rather than her questions.  
“Everything.”  
“What do you need from me?”  
Another crack of the crop caught his other leg in an almost identical spot.  
“Everything.”  
“Do you want to be a _top_ Oliver?” she asked as she dragged the crop up between his ribs, stopping at the tip of his sternum.  
“Sometimes.”  
His breath hitched and became erratic as he prepared himself for another smack that didn’t come.  
She leaned in against the crop, bending its shaft as it buckled like an arch between them, “what would you have me do Oliver?”  
His head was a rush with ideas, _black ropes against porcelain skin, her red lips wide with pleasured cries, his arm muscles taunt as he held her back against his chest_ , so many flashes and yet his head was so foggy and his blood had all congregated in the base of his cock that he couldn’t say a single one.

She slapped the crop against the right side of his chest first before she mirrored it on the left, shocking Oliver’s shoulders so they jerked forward.  
“Tell me another secret pet,” she spoke on honeyed words and with softly hooded eyes.  
And for just a moment Oliver considered telling her the one he had kept very close, _I love you._

But he didn’t.  
He shouldn’t.  
_He couldn’t._

So he said the next best thing, “It’s no secret to me Miss Smoak, but you really are remarkable.”  
Felicity leaned in and kissed his lips, softly and with only a gently nudge from her tongue between his lips; completely breaking character, before she stepped back and admired the man in front of her, “Thank you for remarking on it.”

She touched the tip of his cock and Oliver winced at the sensation, every nerve of him was firing there and it felt like burning embers waiting for only the tiniest spark to ignite them. Felicity could see the desperation in his eyes as she sat on the table in front of him. Putting one hand to his cheek and the other on his knee, she stroked her thumb up his cheekbone and sighed softly, “Say the word Oliver and I’ll relieve it for you.”

He felt her words echo down the shaft of his cock and for a moment he wanted to shout _Aruba_! But he knew the payoff would be frantic and haphazard and he would be so desperate for it that they wouldn’t even make it onto the nearby rug, let alone the bedroom, and he also knew two seconds after sinking inside her, his eyes would roll back in his head, his balls would tighten and he’d be firing off shuddered syllables of her name as he came like a teenager on prom night.

 _No_ , he shook his head in response.  
It wouldn’t happen like that. He wouldn’t let it.

“Tell me what we’ll do?” he asked softly as he tried to regain some of his wits with a few quick blinks.  
“Wet, warm and tight,” Felicity answered with her hands still cupping his cheek and covering his knee, “On the drive home we would stop and I’d have you here,” she pointed to her lips as they curved into a smile, “Wet,” she hummed.

Oliver instinctively moaned at the way her words sent more blood rushing south of his heart.  
“Then back at your apartment I would give you warm,” her hand travelled from his knee to her upper thigh where her finger stroked a small circle near the apex, “and once you got your strength back…” she paused to graze her finger under his chin, “well you can guess where I mean when I say _tight_.”

He knew alright, even before she rolled from one cheek of it to the other.  
“I call it the _holey_ trinity,” she smiled back a laugh as Oliver’s eyes widened and his jaw swung open like a faulty hinge.

He was definitely not going to say _Aruba_ tonight.  
“I want that,” he rasped before he managed to clear his throat, “Exactly as you planned it, I want that.”  
“So no _Aruba_ tonight?” she asked, with just a hint of disappointment – while her finger had done the trick, she was still nursing an itch for something a little more _girded_.  
Oliver shook his head, his answer was final.

* * *

  
They were less than an hour before lunch at the warehouse the next day and Felicity could see the tension building on his face. For someone who had not really entertained the idea of male chastity, Oliver was determined to push his limits and as each minute past, Felicity could see it taking its toll on him.

His eyes were puffy and his shoulders twitched of their own volition as he sat slightly hunched in his chair. It hadn’t been long – _48 hours_ , but it had been intense and with him feeling things that he had never allowed himself to truly feel before, Felicity could sympathise with his discomfort.

Giving into his desire to be controlled and taking pleasure where others might find pain; the combination had him frazzled and as he ran his hand, yet again, choppily through his hair, Felicity knew he was near his limit, especially as her teasing and wayward feet had kept him on the precipice of orgasm most of the day.

She took his hand and led him a little deeper into the corner of the warehouse, where the lights dimmed out and they were completely shielded from view. She knew the security camera nearby was on the fritz and that, even if it was working, the spot she had chosen was in a small blind spot.

There was a distant sound of a forklift driving over concrete but no one would come looking for them and even if they did, they wouldn’t find them without advance warning and certainly not easily.

She pressed the back of her hand against his forehead, it was clammy and scored with deep lines, _he’d reached his limit._

Felicity gently loosened his belt and opened his trousers before she slipped her hand down his briefs and adeptly unlocked his cage, which she slipped (together with the key) into the pocket of her red coat.

She gently rolled his cock around the palm of her hand as Oliver’s eyes lapsed closed and his head titled back against the wall, enjoying the slow build of his new erection.  
“You did good Oliver,” she whispered before she kissed his neck along the edge of his shirt collar.  
He could feel himself harden in her palm and he bit down on his fist to stop himself from groaning.

Felicity took a handkerchief from her other pocket and wrapped it around his rigid cock.  
“Just let go,” she urged as she continued to pleasure him with long, tight strokes.  
His eyes snapped open when he realised she wasn’t stopping and he caught her wrist with his hand.  
“Wait,” he mumbled, his eyes trying to focus between rapid blinks, “This is how it ends?”  
“Oliver you have nothing to prove, you can say the word now.”  
“And I finish like this? But what about your _holey_ trinity?” he finally stopped blinking as his eyes latched onto hers.  
“We can still do that later, or an adaption at least,” she smiled, unsure if they could space out four orgasms for him in one day, but she could at least _try._  
“This isn’t how you wanted to end it?” he sighed listless.  
“You have nothing to be ashamed of Oliver, let me do this for you.”

Despite how _fucking_ wonderful it felt to have the option to let himself go this time, this wasn’t how he wanted it either.  
“I’ll wait,” he said and Felicity withdrew her hand.  
“Are you sure?”  
He kissed her lips softly as his hands cupped either side of her face and her ponytail swished against his knuckles.  
“I’m sure,” he answered when they finally pulled their lips apart.

And he made another decision right then to himself; _tonight he would ask her to stay with him_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you missed the link, read "Audience Participation" (Wolfe and Felicity) here:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/14196783/chapters/33497616


	14. The Inevitable Wake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick little note: I'm well aware I allowed you, as the readers to know far more about Oliver's feelings than I did about Felicity's. For anyone who knows my writing style, you would have realised that was a conscious decision and trusted I made it for a reason...which I did, namely these last two chapters.

_It had started with a smile._   
_A slightly lopsided smile where one side twitched and his tongue hid behind the gap in his lips._

_It had just been a smile, simple and naked._   
_But it had changed so much._

_Felicity stared out the window into the deep blue abyss of the early morning, knowing that the sun would soon rise on a day she couldn’t pretend hadn’t happened._

_She feathered her fingers through her tousled hair as a gentle sighed passed over her swollen lips, still tender from the night before._

_The night everything had changed._   
_And it all started with a smile._

_**Hey, you there** _   
_**Can we take it to the next level?** _   
_**Baby do you dare?** _

********   
**[Around 5pm the day before]**

They were well over half way home when the bright orange and pink hues of the setting sun streaked across the sky above them and, with the top down and the wind reddening her cheeks, Felicity leaned over and gently grazed her fingers up the inside of Oliver’s thigh.

His eyes shot briefly to hers with a smile wrapped across his expression and a twitch in his throat.

She slid a little closer and pressed her lips to his ear.  
“Pull over,” she instructed as a rest stop came into view.

Oliver turned the car off at the siding and drove under the overhang of an oak tree that had seen much over its undoubtedly long life.

“Do you want it inside the car or outside?” she spoke with a smoky purr in her voice that almost ran the words together melodically.  
Oliver leaned across the centre console of the car, making the leather seat creak with the movement, until his finger was close enough to coil around the ponytail that lay limply over her shoulder. His eyes devoured her with such an inferno that Felicity found herself needing to, but being unable to, blink away.

“Actually,” he spoke softly, a voice at odds with the carnality of his stare, “and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but could we wait?”  
She finally managed to pull away from his magnetic stare, blinking for only a moment, but long enough to sever it’s intensity.  
“Your refractory period is about thirty minutes Oliver,” she spoke calmly but with a coquettish smile teasing just the wingtips of her lips, _no matter how hard she tried to remain analytical, Oliver was always able to pull that smile out,_ “by the time we get home and then space each one of the holey trinity out, there might not be time,” she answered precisely, _how perfectly adept she had become at removing the emotions._

_Like father, like daughter._

Oliver laughed somewhat abruptly, a sort of amused candour taking every plane of his face, “As strangely adorable that it is that you know how long it takes me to get ready to climax again...”  
Felicity shrugged, she liked numbers and facts.  
“… well as much of a turn on that I find that, and believe me, I do, when we get back to Starling, I was hoping we could do something else.”

She considered his request with a painted nail set against her smiling ruby lips as the branches of the oak swayed above them in the gentle breeze. Oliver had done so well that weekend, given into a side of himself that Felicity wasn’t sure he’d ever truly embodied, he had trusted her even when doing so made him vulnerable; and a man willing to be vulnerable was something Felicity was drawn to. She blinked rapidly as she tried to tug straight the smile that was beginning to give her away, but even if Oliver didn’t know it yet, Felicity was finding the conclusion hard to ignore _this was becoming much more than a simple arrangement._

“Alright then,” she answered with a smile as she sat back in the seat before she teased the edge of her dress, “Will I like what you have in mind?”  
Her voice was like honey to his ears and Oliver, briefly, lamented his decision to wait as the smooth, sensual tone in her voice and the way her fingers brushed against her silky thighs made his cock thump behind his zipper and his fingertips ache to reach out and touch her.

“I’m counting on it,” he managed to reply out through the side of his smirk while his hands twisted around the steering wheel.

_He hadn’t disappointed her yet._

 

* * *

 

She followed him into the suite he still called home with their fingers interlocking in a habit they seemed to have both fallen into when no one else was around to notice. He took her jacket and brushed his lips down her neck in recompense before he draped it over the back of a chair.  
  
“Are you intending on making dinner again?” Felicity hummed, her eyes heavily lidded as she walked lithely towards the living room, kicking off her heels as she reached the luxuriant mat that felt almost heavenly as she sunk her toes into it.

Oliver followed her deeper into the room, his nose delighting at the soft trail of perfume she had left behind, until he reached her near the couches.  
“I’ll order in a bit later,” he whispered as his mouth descended towards the slope of her neck, “unless you’re hungry now,” he added seconds before his lips met with her warm skin.

He kissed a delicate path that started near her collarbone and swept down to her spine, carefully tasting the subtle notes of lavender on her skin.  
“I’m not,” she replied softly as her head slowly swayed where his lips directed it, swishing her ponytail against his cheek.

His lips brushed past her hair and nimbly walked their way back up to the other side of her collarbone, leaving a glistening veil of kisses and shivers in their wake before Felicity turned and their lips now sat only a fraction apart, sharing the same warmed air.  
“What did you have in mind?” she asked with flirtatious eyes and a smoky tone threaded through her words while her fingertips trickled down the front of his shirt like a tiny cascade of raindrops.

He stole her hand and brushed the back of her knuckles against his pouted lips as his eyes stayed pinned to hers, “I’ll show you,” he breathed.

Upstairs Felicity glided across the bedroom carpet towards the large, naked windows that twinkled with the reflections of the City’s lights.  
“The City sure knows how to put on a view for you doesn’t it?” she spoke warmly into the glass as she watched Oliver’s reflection approach.

His warm kiss melted into her shoulder and Felicity allowed her eyes to gently close as she steadied her back against his chest. It was warm and solid and when she shallowed her breathing, she could hear his and for a moment – just a moment – she allowed herself to think _what if?_

His fingers grazed up her arm and she didn’t pull away, but rather sunk deeper into his chest to relish the sensation, it was hauntingly soft, mesmerising and it lulled her into a warmth not unlike a mid-summer’s evening.

“What do you want?” Felicity asked as she buried the _what ifs_ and turned to face the present.  
His smile was warm and his eyes were endearing her to them even more as tiny flecks of the city life twinkled in them without dulling their blue, “You,” he whispered before he leaned over and brushed a kiss against the apple of her cheek.

His fingers swept up under her chin before their mouths met. Her lips trembled against his with words she would never be able to express beyond the dull ache in her heart as her eyes fell closed, just begging for this moment to stay perfect a little while longer, at least until the inevitable happened.

But for now she would let this happen because she wanted it to happen, she had _wanted_ it to happen for longer than she could admit – even to herself.

But then her fears took over, crashing on top of her like a tidal wave and sweeping out all the quiet moments and the _what ifs_ and before she knew it, her hands were against his broad shoulders and she had pushed them apart, breaking the kiss. Oliver looked confused, and a fraction of fear rippled down through his eyes and into his lips as they tightened.

With sadness tinged in her eyes, but hidden amongst the shadows of her lashes, Felicity soothed the worried pinch from his lips with a lingered stroke of her thumb.   
“How?” she asked softly, her voice a little stretched as she tried to control the emotion quivering behind it, “The ties again?”

She was floundering for space, for distance, but his smile began to draw her in until she looked down instinctively to the twill carpet beneath her feet and tried her best not to listen to the thump of her heart, while she distracted herself with the notion of how the bright red nail polish on her feet now looked scarlet against the dark carpet.

She allowed herself a moment, a count to three, before she looked up again and found his smile, while softened somewhat, hadn’t faded and she was thankful for that.

“No,” he whispered, the word caught on the air like a gentle breeze against her lips as he took a step toward her, paused, then took another.  
He was so close now, invading her air with his own, but she didn’t pull away – she couldn’t, she could barely stop herself from tipping her head a little ways forward and kissing him.

Like she wanted to.  
Like she shouldn’t.

“What is it you want then?” she asked, her mind fighting back her heart in a war where there would be no real winners.  
“I just want you.”  
She blinked up at him, confused by his answer as she had already offered herself to him, “I don’t understand.”

She watched him swallow a heavy lump in his throat and his lips tremble with anticipation before he opened his mouth and asked her a simple, and yet complicated, question, “Do you want me?”  
A fretful smile trembled the corner of her lips as she fought to control her composure, Alexander had been right, she recognised the look in Oliver’s eyes, only Felicity couldn’t – _wouldn’t_ – see it in her own, “I’m here aren’t I?”  
He looked pained as his lids hung heavy with trepidation.  
“But do you want to be?”  
“Oliver,” she whispered as her hand instinctively reached out to his cheek.  
“Beyond the club, beyond our proposal, our _agreement_ , would you still be here?”

_Yes_  
The answer came immediately to her eyes and only a moment later to her lips, “Yes.”  
A moment of clarity, honesty and vulnerability all rolled into the one small word.

Oliver made sure his eyes were on hers because he needed to see them when the next words fell from his lips, “Then let me make _love_ to you,” he paused for only a moment, worried any further hesitation and he would see something change in her eyes, something he wasn’t sure he could take, “No top or bottom, just you, Felicity…” his fingertips brushed her cheek, revelling in its softness as her eyes glassed over with emotion, “…and me. That’s what I want.”

  
********

_Her eyes stung with fresh tears that fell silently from her blue eyes._   
_In a way she had expected it, she hadn’t been blind to the lingered stares or the way his kisses had changed during their time together._

_He had kissed Megan with force, needing her lips like they were something to be conquered. Everything in those few weeks had been carnal and desperate; as his years of repressing it had finally come to a head and he had been unable to keep them hidden a moment longer – or maybe it was that Megan wasn’t afraid of that animal, that beast inside Oliver that hungered to be dominated and to dominate._

_But as she touched her lips, stilled stained with him, Felicity knew that time had changed his kiss. It was slower, not tamed but controlled and lingered as though he could willing spend every last moment he had savouring it._

_She could have left then, reminded Oliver of what they had both agreed on, but she didn’t._

********

His hands were on her body, lithely running over her curves as they lay tangled in each other on top of the bed while their tongues gently danced, sweeping and rolling over each other, replicating the sensual tango of their bodies while the moment took them.

His fingers tangled into her hair and hers scouted his taut chest until her thigh brushed against his unzipped pants, sending a shiver down her spine. Her lips left of his, leaving them parted and wet, before she kneeled on the bed and slowly unbuttoned her blouse.

Oliver watched with hooded eyes, and even though the blue of them was drowning in the shadows of the dimly lit room, Felicity could see the adoration swarming around his irises. Once her blouse hung open on her beautiful frame, he reached out two tentative fingers and slipped them under one side of the loose chiffon fabric and touched the delicate pads to the swooping curve of her waist and slowly down to her hip, his lips taken with a smile as he simply enjoyed the feel of her silken skin.

He was studying her like artwork, from the slight tousle in her pulled back hair to the fine veil of perspiration across her forehead, and from the warm blush that pinched her cheeks to her lips, faded red but swollen and wet, like a plump fruit ready to be devoured, before his gaze landed on her usually tempestuous blue eyes that were now sedated and slowly swirling in infinite shades of blue, like a tranquil pool, so deep that he could dive in them and never come up for air.

She recalled the first time she'd given herself over to sex, with a college boyfriend who had been barely more experienced that her. His hands had been hesitant but kind, his lips had been tentative but soft and their first time had been sweet but clouded with a level of awkwardness and self-consciousness that came with the realities of the ‘first time’.

But in that moment, as Oliver moved to kneel in front of her, his eyes awash with fond affection and besotted with passion, it was as though time had been wound backwards and she was back at the moment where she felt the rush of excitement and exhilaration for that first time, only now with a knowledge of how good it could feel and awareness about how to achieve that.

Oliver wet his lips with his tongue before he dropped his mouth to her neck in a flourish of kisses until he stilled near her pulse and swept his tongue over the warm thrumming beneath her skin. She knew it was racing, galloping like a thoroughbred, because she could feel her heart threatening to burst from her chest at his attentions, but for once in her life, Felicity didn’t try to stem it or control it, she wasn’t thinking about agreements or arrangements, in fact the only thing on her mind at that moment was just how amazingly soft his lips felt against her skin and how she’d never thought to appreciate that before.

He continued to hop a delicate flutter of kisses down her warm chest, following the tendrils of blushed pink which spread down from her sternum like fingers. When his lips met with her core, his hands slid up her chest under the billowing blouse and tipped it off the edges of her shoulders, before he guided it down her arms until it fell freely from her body. Inquisitive fingers trickled over the clasp of her bra as his eyes looked and waited for her approval.

And even though no request left his mouth Felicity answered him with a soft, “Yes.”  
When her bra joined her blouse of the floor she reached for the hem of his white cotton singlet, his shirt long since discarded to the floor. Oliver raised his arms and she lifted it from his body and dropped it carelessly off the edge of the bed.

As they both knelt on the bed, naked from the waist up and so close that they shared the same air, there was a moment of vulnerability when his hands slowly shifted to her waist and held here there while his eyes drunk her in, she felt _vulnerable but safe._

Their mouths meshed together, warm and lingered, as they took their time to feel and to taste, with their tongues exploring each other’s mouths and running the outlines of one another’s lips. Seconds turned into minutes where nothing else moved, just their lips, until her hands began exploring the slopes of his sinewy back, with her fingers gliding over his smooth skin now slick with a fine mist of sweat.

Leaving his lips, she knew there was something he wanted to say because there was something hanging from the tip of her tongue too.  
But neither of them spoke, neither really knowing how as the words tortured their throats.

Oliver watched her anxiously as she slipped off the bed until she placated his worry with an unfettered smile before she straightened her skirt, unzipped it at the back and let it fall to the floor, alongside the rest of her clothes.

He stood off the bed next to her and wordlessly undressed himself before he took her hand in his and showered the back of it with feather-like kisses.

She crawled back onto the bed, trailing Oliver onto it behind her before she guided his hands around her waist and reeled him in. They kissed lithely, her lips encasing his bottom lip while his tongue explored her top bow, until they fell slowly back onto the mattress.

As they lay face to face with their lips barely touching and her fingers drawing faint paths along the swollen muscles of his chest, Oliver reached around her head and gently tugged the elastic from her hair. Her honey tresses spilled like melted gold onto his hand and the white linen that was puffed up like a cloud behind her.

With the same gentle precision, Oliver ran his finger along the arm of her glasses before he softly whispered, “May I?”  
She nodded and Oliver plucked the two-tone glasses from her face before he rolled away a little to place both them and the elastic gently onto the bedside table.

When he came back to her, his lips were parted with words balanced on the edge of them and she knew what they would be. Afraid to hear them, Felicity tipped her chin and caught his lips against hers to steal a few more moments where she didn’t have to admit something to herself; _and to him._

His fingers laced through her hair and twisted into the roots as he deepened the kiss she had started. Their bodies rolled together and moments later Felicity was underneath him, shadowed by his impressive frame and grazing her nails down his bristled jaw as he pulled back from the kiss.

He settled himself on his heels between her legs as they tented either side of his waist before his lips pressed an ardent kiss at the tip of her breastbone and, while his fingers skimmed down her ribs, he danced feathered kisses down towards her breasts.

She sighed feverishly when his moist lips wrapped around her budded nipple and tenderly drew it into his mouth while his tongue swooped across the tip. Her back arched reactively which pushed her deeper into his mouth and chaffed her supple skin against his bristled chin, making a pleasured moan drip from her wet lips.

He looked up her chest as his tongue teased her nipple as a playful smile coloured his eyes.  
“This was supposed to be about you,” she breathed, her words slightly stunted as his hand scooped up her other breast and gently squeezed.

He dropped her breast with a soft pop before he tickled a few delicate kisses towards her other, “I like it better…” he kissed up towards her broiling nipple, “…when it’s about us.”  
When the final word left his mouth he drunk in her breast, a little rougher than before, while Felicity’s keening little noises spurred him on.

From there he kissed down her stomach, enjoying the way it rolled underneath his lips while his fingertips scouted on ahead; she was ticklish there and he’d never noticed it before.

Her eyes fluttered as she tried to stifle a laugh just before Oliver reached her mound. He swept a digit through her folds and coated it in her slick juices before he rubbed it slowly across his lips.  
“Is that for me Felicity?” he asked, relishing the way her name made his tongue stroke the tip of his lips and taste her sweetness there.  
“It’s for you,” she answered softly as she reached down between their bodies and teased the tip of his cock.  
She could see how swollen it was as the skin spread thinly over the veins and taut around the head. It twitched under her touch while his eyes rolled towards the ceiling and Felicity knew that it must be aching for release.

She gently tugged his cock while she sliced the head of it through her dewy folds, making Oliver moan voraciously into the air.  
“Let me,” she whispered as Oliver’s shoulders limped forward.  
He could do little more than nod lithely as the ache between his legs intensified, before they rolled together and it was now Felicity sat between his tented legs.

His hands ran down each leg with her thumbnail scouring the inside of his thighs until they reached his impressively statuesque cock. Cupping his swollen balls in one hand, she slithered the other up his shaft before it dived off the end and her lips pressed a kiss along his slit.

He hummed reactively, a deep gravely hum that rumbled up from the pit of his stomach and made his chest reverberate from it, moments before Felicity’s lips circled the head of his cock.

She had barely an inch of him inside her warm mouth and her tongue had only just coiled around his ridge when his vision blurred and his breath strangled his throat; and by the time his tip was running over the smooth curve of her palate, Oliver was almost ready to explode.

She could taste the precum leaking from his head and it’s thin, salty beads melted into her tongue as she swarmed it around his cock while her lips fed him deeper inside. His thigh was trembling under her hand and his balls tightening under the slow massage of her other hand while she hollowed her cheeks and brazenly sucked.

“Felicity, baby,” he muttered breathily, his words stretched and rasped, “not…like…this.”  
She slid him out from her mouth and caught his cock in her hand, gently stroking it as she looked up at his wrecked face, “You need to climax Oliver,” she whispered softly as she smiled at the utter carnality he was trying to hide in his expression.

His hand caught her neck and pulled her closer until her nipples prickled his chest, “Inside you,” he pleaded as his eyes delved into hers, “please.”  
She kissed his salty forehead and shifted her legs so they straddled his closed thighs before she bucked her hips and rode the length of his cock between her folds.

With her hands braced against the cusps of his shoulders, Felicity twisted and swerved her hips until his head was positioned at her entrance and, with their eyes locked and the heat radiating between their bodies, she sunk down onto him making him groan quite impulsively.

His shaft was soon surrounded by her warm, cushioned walls and he could think of nothing more than the way her body seemed to fit so perfectly around his, embracing and stretching around him.

Felicity watched as relief struck his eyes, smiling as the same soon turned into pleasure as she began to gently rock her body against his. He had called her ‘baby’ and while in the moment she had chosen to ignore it, the affection from that single word now rung sweetly through her mind. It took everything she had in that moment not to lean down, kiss her lips to his ear and whisper the same word back to him.

But she couldn’t, because one day Oliver would wake up from his rose-tinted slumber and he would see her for what she really was, a woman confused by the idea of love with no idea how to feel it.

Sure, she could care for someone deeply, love them in her own way, but that wouldn’t be enough for him – it shouldn’t be enough. She had made that mistake with Wolfe, giving him every part of her that she could and yet something was always missing, something he deserved but that she just couldn’t give him.

Tears stung the back of her eyes as they moved together, his body rising off the bed to thrust slowly up as she circled her hips until Oliver lifted off the mattress and, with his hand braced around her back, he folded his legs underneath his body and lowered her onto his thighs, pressing their chests together.

**_Don't, be scared_ **   
**_'Cause if you can say the words_ **   
**_I don't know why I should care_ **

His lips fell back onto her neck, kissing the threads as he relished in the heat radiating off her while her fingers combed up the back of his head and her forehead dropped to his shoulder, shielding the single tear that fell like scolding water from her eye.

They continued the slow rhythm of their movements until Oliver felt the tug of his impending climax tightening the cords in his thighs. His lips moved to her ear where he gently pressed a kiss to the seam and whispered, “I want to give you everything,” with a voice so thin and hauntingly soft as it trembled from his lips.

She combed her fingers through his hair before she kissed his jaw and answered with a soft, “I know.”  
 _She only wished she knew how to give him the same._  
“Let go Oliver,” she instructed in a smoky whisper.  
Oliver hugged her tighter to his chest as he buried himself to the hilt in a flurry short and fast thrusts while Felicity wrapped her arms around his neck and held on.

His cock sliced through her walls, plunging deeper and deeper inside until there was no space between them and the room echoed with their desperate cries of pleasure. He came first in long ropes of release and quivered, hot syllables of her names that misted into her neck.

And when another tear slid from Felicity face and merged with the tiny beads of sweat running down his neck, she came too, silently sobbing kisses into the curve of his shoulder.

  
A lifetime later and with her tears masked behind a genuine smile, she was in his arms, snuggled against the length of his body just listening to the gentle thump of his heartbeat with her head on his chest and euphoria swept in a warm blush across her cheeks.

“I should go,” she whispered, she winced after the words left her mouth, instantly hating them but knowing they were right all the same – she should.  
“You don’t have to,” Oliver breathed as his fingers pinned back her hair and he sunk a kiss on her forehead, “You could stay.”

********

_No._   
_It’s a simple word, one she should have said then, wrapped up in Oliver’s arm, just like she should have said it years before to another man when she realised he loved her more than she could ever love him back._

_He had always known and she had never made a promise of anything more than “loving him as best she could” while she tried to pretend he felt the same way._

_She should have said no._

********

“Okay,” it was thin and stretched and the most honest she had ever allowed herself to be.  
She rolled over slowly and let Oliver’s large frame envelope her with his fingers sweeping down her naked arm until he tucked his arm under hers and his fingers curved around her breast.  
“Do you want me to close the blinds?” he asked before gently kissing the threads of her swanned neck.  
She pressed her back into his under the luxuriant linens and smiled as her eyes slowly drifted closed in the room that was lit only by the ‘ _billboard stars’_ that twinkled through the tinted glass.  
“No,” she breathed, her body melting into his, “I like the view.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Oliver spoke quietly as he nuzzled his nose in behind her ear.   
“About what?” Felicity hummed while she blissfully took in the slow thump of his heart against her back.  
“This hotel, you were right when you said it doesn’t suit me,” he admitted while he lifted his head just enough off the pillow to look around the shadowed room.  
“Well it doesn’t,” she chuckled before a contented sigh leaked from between her parted lips when the tips of his toes brushed against the soles of her feet.  
He kissed her neck, playfully and sloppily and Felicity lightly giggled at the wet sensation bleeding into her skin, “I was going to call my list agent, see what they have that might be a little more my style.”   
He kept up his unrelenting kisses, holding her in place easily even as her handed batted him away, “You should do that Oliver,” she bubbled, half of her words laced with a laugh as he added his tongue to the flurry of wet lips.  
“Maybe tomorrow,” he gently nipped at the cords of her throat before she pressed her ass into his core, and he could only moan in response.

“I think that’s a great idea,” she answered moments after he relaxed his hold on her and he plucked his lips from her neck.  
She listened as the next two breaths he took seemed deeper and more controlled.  
“I was thinking maybe you could come too?” he said with an anxious knot in his throat, now starving him of oxygen as he waited for her answer.  
She turned in his arms and immediately saw the smile that hooked up the edges of his lips and blossomed in his wide azure eyes.  
“You want me to look at apartments with you?”

His smile grew wider, until it took over every facet of his face – it was soft and yet exuberant, bold and yet whimsical. It was the smile of a man that was in love.  
 _That was it._  
 _It started with that smile._

And if Felicity could have seen the one she gave back to him, she would have realised that it was the smile of a woman just as much in love, only unable to recognise it.

* * *

After she had told him yes, their passion once again overtook them, sweeping them up into the thickest part of the night where their hands became their guides and the soft moans that filled the air around them were their only voices.

The words _I love you_ never left either of their mouths, they didn’t need to.

But now, hours later, as Felicity sat staring out into the moments just before dawn breaking, where everything was still and serene, she understood that it wasn’t just sex.

She knew that now.  
Oliver Queen loved her and she was destined to break his heart.

Fingers touched her naked spine but she didn’t startle as the feeling of them had now become so familiar to her, “Is everything alright?” Oliver asked softly.  
She felt him sit up, and she could hear the rustle of the sheets, even though she never turned to look.  
“Just admiring the view,” she whispered serenely before his arms looped around her waist, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

He kissed the very edge of her shoulder and instinctively she rolled it towards him before his lips pulled away, “Waking up with you is…” he blew out a soft sigh that misted the skin along the ridge of her shoulder, “…it’s like a dream.”

She understood him, she had felt it too during the moments they had shared.  
 _But, inevitably, you wake up from dreams._  
And there was no stopping the inevitable.

 


	15. The Honest Chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song used in part for this chapter and the one before is Naked ~ by James Arthur.

She could smell the decadent Arabica beans, freshly roasted as the aroma of them spun like the best alarm clock she knew. She sighed and stretched out her feet beneath the luxuriant Egyptian cotton sheets with a thread count that probably rivalled her take home pay packet each week. Felicity knew long before her eyes opened that this wasn’t her bed and it wasn’t her rich roast blend permeating the air.

She had spent the night at Oliver's suite.  
And this morning as one eye wearily plucked open, she realised she was waking up to him too.

The memory of last night clung to her body like those perfectly laundered sheets, comfortable, soft, inviting, and for a moment, as the sun streamed in through the uncovered window behind her and illuminated the soft slopes and carved angles of his face, Felicity imagined a world where waking up to _this moment_ didn’t utterly terrify her.

He must have heard her silent thoughts and reservations, because no sooner had they trickled across her conscious, Oliver's eyes flickered open.

He didn’t say anything at first but his lips turned up into a soft smile when his eyes met with her face, surrounded in a halo of warm yellow light that glistened off her golden hair and lit up the form of her body beneath the sheets.

In fact, Oliver only spoke when she blinked those long, fanned lashes against her porcelain skin and he finally believed she wasn’t just the same radiant dream he’d found himself having for weeks.

“Good morning,” he rasped, his throat a little dry and hoarse, no doubt from the night before with its panted and utterly unadulterated moans; _thank goodness the only neighbours he had were two levels below the bed._  
“Morning,” Felicity breathed, her voice a beautiful smoky-gravel that found Oliver's member twitching against the sheets.

He wanted so much to cup her face in his palm, draw it close and just barely touch his lips to hers for languid moments where her breath would mist his lips and every inhale she took would tremble against them.

But instead he watched her eyes drift down and a silent sigh slump her shoulders.  
“Was last night okay with you?” he asked astutely.  
She blinked up at him, her eyes wide and full and her bottom lip, free from colour but still lushly pink, caught between her teeth, “Yes.”  
Her hand ran slowly across her thighs, taking the same path his had last night.  
“And with you?” she asked cautiously, a secret question hidden beneath.  
_Had it been what he’d hoped, just her, just them?_  
“It was perfect,” he sighed, not caring that his answer was the epitome of cheese, even as she blinked away with a chuckle.

He kissed the inside of her forearm from her elbow to her wrist, humming as his lips sunk into her soft skin. Her hand folded at his mouth as he turned it with his hand to scatter soft kisses against the back of it.

“And today?” he asked, kissing the question into her knuckles, “Will you still come?”  
She knew what he meant, to look at apartments with him, and despite it being a Monday, they weren’t expect at work until tomorrow.  
“Okay,” she smiled as her body instinctively rolled towards his while she tried her hardest to hold her stirring reservations at bay.

“I’m going to have a shower and then I’ll make you breakfast,” he lifted the sheet from his body as Felicity gazed down it and smiled at the unabashed way he carried himself, his cock thick and erect.

“Warm the water up,” she invited as a smile flirted her lips, “I’ll join you soon.”  
He leaned over the bed and pecked her forehead, “Yes ma’am.”

Sitting up in the bed with her knees tented and her slender arms wrapped around them, Felicity caught her reflection in the mirror across the room. Her freckles smattered across her cheeks, her hair tousled into her natural curls and her lips a naked peach, albeit a little red around the edges from where Oliver's beard had left its mark. She smiled, creasing her eyes at the corners as she touched a finger to her lower lip.

But the smile left when beneath her reflection, she saw his.  
_You’ll either be like her, weak and desperate or you'll be like me and walk away._  
She had been 10.

 **_Cause here I am, I'm givin' all I can_ **  
**_But all you ever do is mess it up_ **

Felicity liked to tell people she didn’t know her father. He was absent for a large chunk of her life so she never considered that a lie. In fact, if anyone ever bothered to ask her about him the answer she had carefully constructed was always the same; he left her and her mother when she was 4 years old, and while that was true, it wasn’t the _entire_ truth.

While she remembered moments of sitting on the porch watching her father leave in a haze of angry words and broken crockery, that was not her last memory of Noah Kuttler, her father. In fact he had wandered in and out of their lives a total of four times, although that number would be three if you asked her mother.

Just over a year after he left the first time, at the age of 5, Felicity moved to Connecticut with her mother at the behest of Noah in some sort of effort to salvage a family where there was really no hope of there being one. It lasted nine months until he decided it “wasn’t for him after all”, left one night and _that was that,_ so at 6 years old, Felicity picked her mother up off the bathroom floor as she sobbed for the man that she loved, that had left them once again.

He came back again when Felicity was 8. She had begged her mother to tell him to leave, to not let him in again when she had only just found herself okay without him, but, with a heart desperately in love with a man who didn’t deserve it and hopeful that that was enough, Donna let him back in.

After a year, even Felicity began to think that maybe this could work, that perhaps her mother’s hopefulness wasn’t misplaced and her love not misguided.

But eventually all cracks show themselves.

And one morning, after almost two years, when he decided it wasn’t what he wanted in life as they sat around the table for breakfast, the inevitable happened.

At 10 years old, with dry eyes and an unmoved face, Felicity walked her father to the front door and said goodbye. It was then he offered his remark, that she would turn out to be one of her parents, it was simply in her genes.

When Felicity was 14 he came back a final time, only this time Donna never had a chance to let him back in.

**[August, 2003]**

Felicity looked up from her math homework spread out across the coffee table with her mouth full of baloney sandwich and groaned, frustrated, at the knock on the door. It was probably Henry again, the 12 year old from next door who had a completely irrational crush on her and would leave flowers on her doorstep to prove it.

She sighed as she dragged herself up off the floor and padded the short – but extremely taxing journey for a teenager – distance to the front door, unbolted the lock and opened it a crack, leaving it on the chain.

“Hi Felicity,” the familiar face of the man now with greying hair but the same translucent blue eyes said as he stooped a little to her level.  
“Dad?” she choked back the rest of her mouthful as what was left in her hand fell to the floor.  
“Can you let me in honey, is your mother here?” he bombarded as he inched towards the door.

Felicity straightened her shoulders, thinned her eyes and answered calmly, “Just a minute.”  
She closed the door and walked straight into her mother’s room and to her side of the bed. Pulling open the drawer of the bedside table Felicity found what she was looking for under the latest copy of _People_ magazine.

She gripped the cold steel in her hands and took a moment to stare at herself as she past the bedroom mirror.  
_He wouldn’t do this again._

Nothing in that moment felt real, even as Felicity’s fingertips glided across the slightly embossed wallpaper down the hall, it was as though they weren’t her fingers and she was merely a silent observer in everything that followed.

She opened the front door and pointed the barrel of the gun at her father’s chest.  
“Get out of our lives,” she said coolly as she pulled back the safety.  
He shouted something, but it was as though she had him on mute and not a single word made it through.  
“We don’t need you,” she spoke, a deftly calm hung over her words, “She doesn’t need you.”  
“I love her, I love you both,” his voice was quick and panicked.  
“If that’s love,” Felicity balked, “then I hope it never finds me.”  
“You won’t shoot me.”  
The gun shook in her hands before she pointed it down to his feet and, in a haze of moments where she saw what his _love_ had done to her mother, she pulled the trigger. It only just missed his foot.

***********

She never saw him again after that, but the damage was already done because at 14 Felicity only knew three things about love;  
_Love made her mother fall for a man who only knew how to take and destroy_  
_Love was a word people used to pretend everything was okay_  
_Love wasn’t real._

And she would grow up to believe the only way to not become her father, who she was like in so many other ways, and hurt those around her, was to never – _ever_ – let anyone close enough to love her.

* * *

 

It was nearing lunch and with two apartment views under their belt, Oliver and Felicity dutifully followed a letting agent that had come with Moira’s high recommendation around the high-end penthouse apartment that had been carefully decorated to give the space a feeling of comfort and luxury – two things that didn’t often meet eye to eye.

Somewhere between the first apartment and the second, they had stumbled across Tommy and Emilia strolling the sidewalk with apparently no plan on where they were actually going, and a snap decision later found Oliver and Felicity walking this third apartment with them both.

The agent, Jean-Pierre, an older Frenchman with an immaculately pressed and tailored grey suit, was busy telling Oliver about the investment potential of buying in such a prestigious complex while Tommy was riffling through the empty cupboards grinning to himself no doubt about the things he could store away in plain sight. Felicity however could focus on none of that as the euphoria of the night before started to wear off and her walls started rebuilding.

He’d meant nothing by it and it shouldn’t have made her react the way it had, Jean-Pierre was too engrossed in the apartment's design features to notice or care, and both Tommy and Emilia were well aware of Oliver and Felicity's relationship, so he was breaking no rules in doing so, but when Oliver casually reached for Felicity's hand, held it and walked them, quite by accident, in front of a hall mirror, allowing Felicity to see them – holding hands, walking in sync, like the quintessential couple shopping for a new _home_ , Felicity felt a sudden and engulfing urge to vomit as her stomach knotted while every other organ in her body somersaulted.

She managed to compose herself enough to suck back the tears that were burning behind her eyes as she dropped Oliver's hand and stepped backwards.

He turned the instant her soft hand slipped from between his, the smile on his lips flickered into one laced with confusion as he looked around for some reason for her pull back.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” she said quietly as she gathered her bag from a nearby barstool.  
“Is everything okay?” Oliver asked cautiously as his fingertips glided down her arm and paused at her elbow.  
_You love me and I can’t love you back._  
She swallowed the bitter words and nodded slowly, “Everything is fine, I just,” she blew out a breath that was shaky as her voice began to crack, “I just have to go.”

“Mr Queen, you need to truly appreciate this view,” Jean-Pierre announced from across the room as he swayed his hands around the panoramic view of the Bay.  
Oliver kept his eyes on Felicity even as she started to back towards the door, mouthing a sorry.

“I’ll come with you,” he pleaded, recognising the tears hiding behind her sapphire eyes.  
“Please don’t,” she whispered, her voice trembling, “I’ll call you later.”

She turned, and fought back the tears as her teeth fretted her lower lip, the pain stifled the tears long enough for her to flee from the apartment, leaving Oliver bewildered.

“I’ll go,” Emilia said as she rested a hand on Oliver’s shoulder, making him realise he had walked 10 paces to the door without even noticing.  
He had pushed Felicity too far and he knew it; although he didn’t know why.

Emilia caught up with Felicity just outside the lavish apartment complex’s entrance. When she heard her name being called Felicity considered shucking off her shoes and making a run for it, but she was in no doubt that Emilia would chase her down without a second thought.

“Felicity!” Emilia called a second time and Felicity's feet betrayed her at their refusal to move, “Do you want to explain that?” the brunette asked as she caught up to Felicity.  
“I have an appointment, that’s all,” Felicity lied, quite pathetically she was aware, but unable to come up with anything better.  
“Why are you lying?” Emilia quizzed as she ran a hand through her silky tresses while the wind caught it, “This is you running away again because someone loves you, isn’t it?”

“He doesn’t love me,” Felicity answered as the wind lashed her ponytail against her cheek, “he might think he does but he doesn’t, he’ll see that soon enough.”  
“Are you trying to convince me of that or yourself?” Emilia fired back.  
The blonde sighed as she retreated, “I have to go.”

“He’s not your father Felicity,” her friend begged as she caught her arm at the wrist.  
Felicity looked down at the slender fingers that held her tight, red nails against alabaster skin, before she slowly looked up, unspent tears making her eyes glass over, “It’s not Oliver I’m worried about,” she spoke softly, “The apple tree is mine after all, who’s to say I didn’t fall far from it?"

She slowly plucked Emilia’s fingers from around her wrist, “He wants something more than I can give him. I couldn’t love Wolfe and I can’t love him, not the way he deserves.”  
The words stung her throat and felt like razors against her lips, but she had seen what love did, how it destroyed people and she couldn’t do that to him.

Wolfe, at least, had understood her as best as he could. He had accepted that there would always be a part of her missing from the relationship, half of her was enough for him – but it wouldn’t be for Oliver.

“Baby girl,” Emilia pleaded, her own eyes pooling with tears, “You’re not your father either.”  
“I have to go,” Felicity repeated, her voice cracking beneath her tears as her heart tightened in her chest.

Emilia watched as Felicity retreated a few more steps, the wind twisting and whipping her blonde ponytail like a flailing animal desperate to escape a trap.  
“Don’t run,” the brunette mouthed, her deep eyes wide and pleading, “Please, don’t run.”

Felicity never saw the last of her friend’s plea before she turned around and disappeared into a the late lunchtime crowd.

* * *

 

Staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror that night, Felicity heard only her father’s premonition that she herself was showing true. She cleared away the condensation as she hugged the towel tighter to her chest.

Oliver had tried calling her numerous times and his messages were nothing short of gracious and caring and she promised him by text that they would talk tomorrow.

For a moment this morning she had been hopeful, but now there was little more than faded mascara tracks down her pale cheeks and a heavy heart that only saw one way out.

For a few languid moments, Felicity found herself imagining a time before Oliver as she tried to decide if that night of the Christmas party had been the singlehandedly worst decision she had ever made in her life – _or possibly the best._

Either way, there was no turning back from it, just like there wasn’t any turning back from the next decision she was about to make, although this one felt heavy in the pit of her stomach and made her hands shudder around the phone as she brought it to her ear.

“Felicity,” a smooth, British voice spoke softly down the phone after a two rings.  
“Alexander,” she forced a smile onto her lips and through her voice, knowing any less than that and he would question her about it.  
“How was your trip?” he asked, the sound of cutlery clinking in the background told Felicity he was out, which would work to her advantage – _less questions and all._  
“It was fine,” she answered simply, wishing she could put more feeling into it, but wholly unable to for the fear that he might pry out of her something she wasn’t willing to handover.

She heard him clear his throat and she knew he didn’t believe her but that he was in no position to push her wherever he was.

“I can hear you’re busy, I’ll only be a minute,” she prattled as she forced herself to keep the smile tacked to her face in the vague hope that it would carry through her tone, “The job in Gotham from a few months’ back, is it still available?”

He cleared his throat a second time and she heard the distinctive sound of wood scraping wood as she imagined him apologising to the company across the table, standing while his eyes scouted for a quiet corner and a few moments later the ambient noise dropped away.

“As far as I’m aware the job offered was created _for_ you, I don’t believe they will have filled it with anyone _other_ than you.”  
Felicity steadied her voice as only a small sigh of relief brushed over her lips.  
“You didn’t want the job a few months ago,” he spoke astutely, “what changed?”  
“It’s a good opportunity,” she answered vaguely, and it really _was_.  
“It was a good opportunity months ago, so I ask again, what changed?”

Felicity bit her lip as her brow furrowed to formulate an answer. The job had been offered directly and only to her through a close friend, and business partner of Alexander’s who was looking for someone to expand on the Cyber Security division of the multinational conglomerate he owned. She had turned it down while she sat outside Oliver’s office negotiating meetings in his schedule, for reasons that seemed so natural back then.

“My thoughts on Gotham’s weather, I’ve decided it won’t be as bad as I imagine it,” she replied quietly, a soft chuckle attempting to defuse the seriousness of his earlier tone.  
“The job is yours if you want it Felicity, but..”  
“I want it,” she interrupted.  
“I’ll have him call you,” she could hear the sadness in his voice.  
“Thank you,” she could also hear the sadness in hers.

* * *

 

The next morning, an overcast Tuesday with damp air and a cloudy sky that promised rain, Oliver rounded the corner with a smile prepared and a cup of her favourite coffee order pushed out ahead of him, but where he expected to find Felicity he found a man in a lose fitting sports jacket and wire-framed glasses staring at her computer as he tapped away at her keyboard.

He turned his head around the space, for a moment wondering if he had walked right past her by the filing cabinets or fluffing up the new flowers.

But there weren’t any new flowers. The vase sat empty with the dull mid-morning sun reflecting through it.

“Uh,” he started as he walked a few steps closer to the man sat in Felicity’s chair, “you are?”  
The man sniffed as he looked up at Oliver like a deer in the headlights, “Chuck from IT,” he answered with a smack of his lips that Oliver found strangely unnerving.

His first and immediate thought was that Felicity would be absolutely livid when she got back from wherever she was and found someone with undoubtedly less knowledge than her was ‘fiddling’ with her computer. But when he looked at the back of the chair and didn’t find a jacket hung there, or her bag perched on the credenza behind her desk, Oliver realised it didn’t look like she was even _here_.

“Where is… uh, Miss Smoak?” he asked as his grip tightened around her coffee.  
The man looked up from his work a second time, staring at Oliver for a good thirty seconds before he answered, “Oh, Mrs Queen said I should tell you to go see her when you arrived.”  
Oliver offered a terse smile before he walked into his office, set down her coffee and his jacket and marched straight out again.

It took three tediously long minutes before Oliver made it to his mother’s office and Raisa ushered him in with a sombre expression that he didn’t quite understand.

When he stepped into her office, the first person he saw wasn’t his mother sat across her large oak desk, but rather it was Felicity, sitting with her hands on her lap, studying the polish on her nails and his heart instantly tightened.

 _Everyone knew about them._  
That’s why they were here, sitting in a room with his mother.  
_Shit_.  
He took a breath and walked towards the edge of his mother’s desk, fully prepared to admit that the affair had been entirely his decision and that in _no way_ should Felicity be reprimanded for it. It would be a HR nightmare, but he wouldn’t let anything tarnish her.

“Oliver, have a seat,” Moira instructed before Oliver had a chance to open his mouth.  
He looked at Felicity who, while she was clearly not timid or scared, she did look upset and he was ready to hurt someone just thinking about it.

“Miss Smoak has handed in her resignation today,” Moira said evenly as she flittered a piece of paper between her fingers.

Oliver blinked at least twelve times in rapid succession, unsure if he had heard the words correctly.  
Moira continued, her voice remaining polite but stoic, “Due to the sensitive nature of her position we’ve asked for security to accompany her in clearing out her things. The IT department is running a quick scan of her computer making sure there is nothing out of the ordinary there.”  
Oliver wasn’t really listening to his mother as he turned in the leather chair and looked directly at Felicity, “You’re leaving?” he asked, his voice a mix of disbelief and incredulity.  
“I was offered a job in Gotham,” Felicity answered calmly, even though her heart was in knots and her eyes began to water when she looked at the shock scribbled across his face.  
“Between Sunday night and this morning?” he shot back, more tersely than he had intended, but less so than Felicity had expected.  
This hadn’t been the way she wanted to end it.

“Oliver she doesn’t owe us any explanation,” Moira said with a brusque tone directed at her son.  
He held up his hand to his mother without blinking away from Felicity, “Doesn’t she?”  
Felicity’s throat tightened and her lips quivered as her eyes glistened, but she couldn’t offer him any words right now that wouldn’t be cracked and whispered.

“Miss Smoak has enough leave to finish her time up today, we have requested that she do so to ensure there is no issue with the no competition clause in her contract and so that we can be assured that nothing is amiss. This works in Miss Smoak’s favour as the clause will be extinguished by the time she starts her new position,” Moira continued, keeping a watchful eye on Oliver as she ran through nothing more than the standard protocols, “Someone will send a float to you until we can find a replacement.”

He shifted in his seat and stared down his mother as he took exception to the _amiss_ part of her comment, the insinuation being that Felicity might take some of the sensitive information she was privy to in her position and pass it on to her new boss.

“Felicity wouldn’t take anything,” he spat sharply.  
“Oliver it’s protocol,” his mother replied just as sharply, she didn’t like the inference any more than he did, but it was her job to protect the company.  
“It’s fine Oliver, please,” Felicity said softly, as her hand instinctively brushed across his before she tore it back.

“Miss Smoak, you’re free to go, we have already discussed what needs to happen from here,” Moira stood up and extended her hand across her desk.  
Felicity stood too and took the gesture of a quick handshake.  
“I wish you all the very best in the future Felicity, and I truly appreciate the work you have done here, especially in helping Oliver see his own potential.”

Felicity bit the inside of her lip hard enough to bruise the skin and stop the tear that threatened to fall from her eyes.  
“Thank you, it’s been a pleasure to work for you,” she turned her head slightly to look at Oliver, “for you both,” she added before she walked out of the office.

_It was done._

* * *

 

When Oliver returned to his office he found Felicity’s chair empty and her pacing a line behind her desk.  
“I’m sorry,” she spoke first, her cheeks showing signs of spent tears as her eyes filled up with new ones, “I thought that I would have more time to discuss this with you,” her voice cracked as she spoke before she breathed in deeply and tried to regain it, “It wasn’t my intention to leave this way.”

Oliver blew out an artificial laugh to mask the pain that was tearing a hole through his chest as he walked past her and into his office.  
“By discussing things with me, do you mean asking my opinion before you made your decision or just telling me you were leaving before you told my mother?” Oliver asked, his voice raising enough to take the attention of the few employees milling around like vultures.

Felicity followed him into his office and watched as he stood with his back to her and his hunched body braced against the edge of his desk.  
“Maybe we could talk about this later?” she offered sincerely as it was becoming obvious that word had spread and the corridor outside his office began to fill with people attempting to look like they were supposed to be there.

“Will there be a later Felicity?” he asked with his head hung low before he finally looked up and turned towards her, “Will you give me a later?”

Felicity had always considered herself confident with every decision she had made in her life, but as she looked into his eyes and saw the pain etched in there, she had no such confidence in this one.

“Just tell me why?” he asked as he took a step towards her, and then another, and another, until she was within his grasp, even though his arms stayed stapled to his sides.  
“It’s a good job, a great opportunity for me,” she answered quietly.  
It was the truth, and she probably should have taken that opportunity when it was first presented to her, _but she hadn’t._

“Tell me that you leaving this way has nothing to do with us and I’ll believe you,” Oliver pleaded as she looked away, scared his eyes would see what she was trying to hide.  
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, his tone softening as he stooped to see her eyes.  
“No,” the word floated like a whisper from her lips.  
“Did I hurt you?”  
“No.”  
“Then please, Felicity, please tell me why you’re doing this?”  
She looked up, pained by the desperation in his eyes, “I have to,” she answered weakly as she could barely muster the words themselves let alone any conviction behind them.

He touched her arm and she didn’t back away from it, but rather closed her eyes to the familiar warmth of it as he softly cooed, “Why are you afraid of love?”  
Her eyes fluttered open and a solitary tear slid down her cheek, “You can’t be afraid of something you don’t understand.”

She backed half a step away from him, making his hand fall away from her arm.  
“Baby please, I’m here,” he implored, “I’m giving you all I have.”  
“I know,” she sighed, “that’s why I have to go.”  
“Why?”  
“Because I can’t give you that back Oliver, I can’t love you like…” she paused, afraid to say it.  
“Like I love you,” he answered.  
When he said it her heart lifted for a moment before it plummeted, _it was already too late._

“I won’t be what you deserve or what you want,” she cried as another tear slid down her face.  
“Why don’t you let me decide that,” Oliver smiled bleakly as a shaky hand stretched out for her, “because from where I’m standing you are exactly what I want.”  
“I can’t be a woman that you love,” the air drew in through her nose before she blew it out softly, trying to calm her thumping heart, “I’ll only end up hurting you.”

His emotions were naked and vulnerable in front of her and she was breaking his heart with every word she spoke.  
“Why, why do you think that?”  
“Because it’s in my genes,” she said softly as her fingers twisted around each other, “You may have noticed I don’t talk much about my family.”  
Oliver reached a hand to her, touching where her fingers wrung together, “I had noticed that.”

“My mother, well she’s my mother and I love her, she’s kind and loving and she always tries to see the very best in people,” her eyes warmed when she spoke of her mother, regardless of everything, she could never blame her, but her smile faded before she continued, “even when they don’t deserve it. My father, he didn’t deserve it, he walked in and out of our lives more times than anyone ever should.”

She felt a familiar lump in her throat and the urge to turn and run tugged at her heels, but she stayed her ground, she would see this through.  
“He broke my mother’s heart a little more each and every time he left. When I was 10, he left for the third time, I remember it as clear as I can see you in front of me. We were sitting around the table for breakfast, it was Sunday. He finished his eggs and wiped a napkin across his face while my mother was near the fridge pouring me a glass of juice.”

Another sigh bled from her lips as Oliver touched her hands with his.  
“He stood up and said he was done, she thought he meant with breakfast, I knew he meant with us,” she sniffed back tears, begging them to let her get this out, “I listened to her beg him to stay, that she would be better, do better, god Oliver she gave him everything, _everything_ and she was still willing to give him more,” she sobbed her shoulders forward as she remembered seeing her mother crumble for the third time, “I was ten, my father was leaving and I didn’t shed a single tear, not a one.”

Oliver's fingers entwined with hers, _he wasn’t letting her go._  
“When I walked him to the door, I shook his hand and I said goodbye like it was nothing. He gave me the only piece of advice he’d ever given me on that day,” she sucked back tears and swallowed down the lump building in her chest and up her throat, “he said ‘Felicity, there are two types of people in the world, those who believe love can conquer anything, and those who know it never will. Your mother believes it can but we know it can’t. You’ll either be like her, weak and desperate or you'll be like me and walk away, hurting the ones who tried to love you, that will be their price to pay and yours.”

“I would never hurt you Felicity,” Oliver promised and when she looked in his eyes, she believed him, _but_...  
“I know,” she breathed softly, “but I might hurt you. I told you not to love me that you couldn’t fall in love with me.”  
She took her hands from his, even as he tried to grapple them back.  
“No, _Megan_ told me, but I didn’t fall in love with _Megan_...”  
“Oliver please don’t,” she begged, hearing it again would be all too much.  
“...I fell in love with you.”  
“You shouldn’t have,” was all she could say.

He grabbed for her hand but it slipped from his grasp as she began to walk away, “I have to go to HR to hand in my key card. I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt you.”  
She walked from the room with her bag slung from her shoulder, toward the crowd who pretended to disperse.

Oliver followed her out, calling out after her, “Then tell me you don’t love me.”  
She stopped in the hallway as it hushed to hear a pin drop. But she couldn’t give him what he asked.

He touched her shoulder, turning her to face him – to face this moment.  
“Tell me that you aren’t in love with me and that you never will be,” he pleaded.  
“Oliver please,” she cried as the eyes of the people gathered watched on.  
“Tell me,” his voice quivered and his hands shook.  
“I can’t.”  
_She couldn’t._  
“Why?”  
“I’m sorry,” she leaned up against his chest and brushed her lips against his in a kiss that was soaked with tears and shaking with emotion until she pulled back and whispered for a second time, “I’m sorry,” before she walked away.

* * *

  
The door to Alexander’s office flung open as Oliver marched in there. He was irrational and angry and all he could do was shout “Did you do this?” at the man who slowly looked up from his desk.

Alexander carefully laid his pen down onto his pad, stood up, walked around his desk, past Oliver and closed his door with a gentle _click_.

“Felicity called me last night about a job,” Wolfe spoke calmly as he took a perch on the edge of his desk with his hands sat on his lap in an attempt to diffuse Oliver’s anger, “when she asked, I had hoped your relationship had come to its natural conclusion, but…” he spoked softly, “I feared that perhaps it hadn’t. It seems my fear was the correct one, and for that Oliver, I am truly sorry.”  
He offered Oliver a seat but the younger man shook his head as he paced the office.  
“She thinks she’s incapable of love because of her father.”  
Wolfe nodded, he’d heard the story.  
“Do you love her?”  
Maybe Oliver should have been bothered by the question but he wasn’t and the answer came quickly, “Yes.”

Alexander took a reflective breath as he straightened his tie and spun the ring on his finger, “Felicity told me that she thought of you as a lighthouse, something strong that could withstand a storm, her.”  
Oliver nodded, _Megan_ had told him that.  
“Maybe she was more right about that than she knew, lighthouses don’t just withstand the storms, they’re a beacon, a safe place,” he stood up and brushed his hands slowly down the side of his pants, “You and I both know that she doesn’t belong at Queen Consolidated as your EA. She is destined for things much bigger than that and if you fight the storm, neither of you will win.”

He walked the short distance from his desk to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob.  
“A lighthouse is a navigator or a silent tower, which one of those you chose to be will be up to you.”  
He opened the door and smiled as Oliver walked towards it, “You can be to her what I was never able to be. I hope you are.”

* * *

  
Oliver found Felicity on the street putting a box of her things into the trunk of a waiting taxi just as a light rain started to drizzle from the sky. She looked at him sadly, her eyes begging for him to not make this any harder than it had already been – _any harder than it already was._

“I’m not here to change your mind,” he offered as he closed the trunk of the car, sealing her stuff behind it, “If this job is really what you want, then you should take it.”

He looked up to the skyscraper behind them and sighed as she stepped back onto the curb, “You’ve outgrown this place, you probably had long before I put you at a desk outside my office. I know that, so you should go to Gotham and you should be brilliant, and they should grovel at your feet for what you can give them.”

The rain grew thicker as it fell, making her eyes flutter and the raindrops mix with the tears that slid fresh from her eyes.

“But if you go and I don’t say this, I will regret it for the rest of my life,” his hand brushed her cheek and lifted her face towards his as the chilly rain beaded across his trembling lips, “I love you,” he spoke calmly the words he’d once never imagined himself saying, “I’m in love with you.”

She blinked down and squeezed fresh tears from her eyes.  
“Not as Megan, or my EA, but as _every, single_ facet of who you are Felicity, even the parts that you’re afraid I won’t, I love them all, I love you and if there is any chance that you want to feel the same, you owe it to yourself to try.”  
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered as her lips shivered in the rain.  
“You’re not him.”  
“But what if loving me is too hard?”  
“It wont be,” he assured with every ounce of faith in his words.  
“But what if it is?”  
Scooping her shaking hands into his he beamed, “Then that’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

He took her hand and placed it against his sodden chest, “My heart is yours Felicity and if you want to take a chance on me, on love, on us, _just us,_ ” he breathed softly, “then I will be the lighthouse that guides you home.”

Oliver reached for the taxi door and opened it, “I love you.”  
Felicity slipped into the back seat as Oliver smiled at her.

He watched the taxi pull away from the curb just as the heavens opened up and the sky turned a deep shade of grey.

His heart thundered as he watched her drive away, until, it stopped a fifty feet away and the door opened.

Felicity stood out in the deluge with one arm around her waist and tracks of mascara weaving black down her cheeks, but in spite of that, as she walked closer, Oliver saw a smile on her face.

They met somewhere in the middle with both of their hearts threatening to burst from their chests but before Oliver could say a word, her lips were on his.

The frigid water formed rivers around their lips, but they felt only the heat of their breaths as their mouths mashed together, saying almost everything that needed to be said, in the sweeping caress of their lips and the dance of their tongues.

Until, finally, when she pulled away for air, she brushed her cold nose against his, looked into his eyes and whispered the words, “I love you too.”  
For the very first time in her life.  
And she did.

 

**-THE END-**

**{Yes, there will be an epilogue}**


	16. Epilogue

**[Six Months Later]**

“There is a representative from Wayne Enterprises here Mr Queen, shall I give them a meeting room?”  
Oliver looked up from his desk as his new EA, Rebecca, sheltered in the alcove of his office door and scuffed her practical shoes on the marbled floors as she spoke. She was young, in her early 20s, but was conscientious and pleasant to work with and had absolutely no interest in him whatsoever, she didn’t swing his way “at all” were her exact words, unlike the two temps before her.

She had only been on the job for a few weeks, but Oliver could see this working out just perfectly as he looked at the stack of purchasing orders and patent applications he’d managed to work through today while she kept any lurkers at bay.

Word had travelled quickly through QC about Oliver’s office romance with his EA and to say that it sparked an avalanche of requests to _fill_ her _position_ when Felicity left would be an understatement.

He smiled as he remembered just how perfect Felicity had looked that day when, as though the scene was torn from a Hollywood love story, they kissed in the rain. He brushed a finger absently to his lips when he thought about it, unknowingly letting himself drift away in a daze at the memory of it.

“Mr Queen?” Rebecca chimed a second time as she was still waiting for his answer.  
Oliver tapped his engraved pen against his desk and shook his head gently, “Tell security to let them up, they know their way.”  
“Would you like me to stay Mr Queen?”  
“No, no thank you,” Oliver answered, “enjoy your weekend.”

He waited with baited breath and he found himself holding the same in the back of his throat when he heard the ding of the elevator doors and the mumbled conversation in the distance between Rebecca and the new arrival on the floor.

And then he heard it and had to stifle a moan with his fist to his lips, _Tap, Tap, Tap-Tap._

He could feel his heart wanting to burst from his chest as he stared wide-eyed at the door, waiting – just waiting.

“Hello, Mister Queen,” her voice was like velvet as it melted warmly into his ears and her familiar perfume filled the distance between them with a warm blanket of arousal when she floated into his room dragging an overnight case behind her.  
“Hello Miss Smoak,” he croaked in response, the corners of his lips wet with excitement as he stood and walked around his desk while he dragged his finger along the bevelled edge and kept his azure eyes trained on her.

Once he had walked the distance, Oliver leaned around Felicity and closed the door with a tantric-sounding _click_ before he locked it. A moment later and the windows were fogged and the lighting in the room was a warm, ambient yellow.

He kissed her hard and deep, like within her mouth was the oxygen he needed to survive, which may have been metaphorically true. His tongue explored the cusp of her lips for a few languid moments before it delved into the warm recesses of her mouth and traversed every inch.

Her body was warm and her lips supple as his hands enjoyed one and his mouth enjoyed the other, until their need for air pulled them apart, breathless and wanting.

“Fuck, I’ve missed you,” he growled with a ravenous glint in his eye that matched the slightly upturned crease of his lips.  
Felicity grazed her nails down his rough cheek until they drove over his jaw and dug into the soft spot under his chin, just hard enough to make Oliver hiss out a moan while his pulse thumped into the pads of her fingers.  
“It's been less than two weeks since you were out for Wolfe's wedding,” she smiled wickedly, as she wondered if his body still wore marks from that tryst.

“Mmm,” he hummed as his head turned and he kissed her knuckles before her hand floated down his chest, “but you’re my _girlfriend_ ,” the word floated like a whimsical prayer from his pouted lips, “I will never get tired of saying this,” he paused to expel another soft sigh, “...whom I love.”  
Her fingers traversed the lapels of his designer navy suit, “And I’ll never get tired of hearing it.”

His mouth moved closer to hers until they shared the same air with identical breaths, and with each word brushing against her mouth, he asked in a whisper, “How long do I have you for this visit?”  
He needed to know how much time he had for this moment, how long he would have to bask in moments where it was just them, alone and together. He would steal each day, each hour, each minute until there were no more.  
She met his question with a smile before she pecked a kiss against his lips, “Until Tuesday, so the whole weekend and then some.”  
As his arms slipped around her waist a smirk caught the edge of his mouth, “Except?” he could read her eyes.

Felicity bubbled out a soft laugh, threaded around a sigh, “I do have one meeting on Monday afternoon, but it’s a good meeting so you’ll forgive me,” she answered with a playful pout.  
“Oh will I?” he smirked like the Cheshire Cat.  
“I’ll make it up to you,” her fingers tussled through his hair, “I brought your favourite crop.”

Oliver sighed, wanton and unabashed.  
“So what is this meeting for?” he asked, while he tried to focus on anything but the thumping erection between his legs.  
There was an amazing line he had learned to walk – that she had taught him to walk – that skated the mix between pleasure and pain, hunger and gratification, and there was nothing quite like it.

She blinked down and caught what he wasn’t trying to hide, which made a smile rise up over her lips while she reached a finger out to drag her nail around the outline of it before she answered his question without missing a beat, “I need to meet with a realtor to look at some office space in Starling.”  
She waited only a few counted moments before the realisation dawned on Oliver, “Wait does this mean?” he exclaimed, the rest of his sentence dropping away, unneeded.

She flicked her finger at the end of his erection, causing him to bite back a gasp, before she bobbed her head _yes_.  
“They took your proposal to open a subsidiary here?” Oliver effused, eagerly waiting for the same response.  
“Yes,” she answered brightly, her blue eyes swimming with joy, “solely around cyber security and the developments within that.”  
He listened with adoration to the happiness in her voice, watching her leave for Gotham had been like watching the best thing ever to happen to him just float away, unsure whether – even with the hopes that they could somehow make the distance work – she would ever come back into his life.

But she had soared and he’d counted himself privileged enough to see it.  
The thrumming between his legs soon paled in comparison to the thumping of his heart, “You’re coming home?”  
Her fingers gently brushed up his cheek and over his ear, relishing the way his bristles grazed her palm, “I’m coming home.”

His lips pounced on hers fervently kissing against them in a hurried flash of lips and tongues and gnashing teeth, before seconds later they pulled back breathless.  
“Let’s go home and talk about it,” she smiled, wicked thoughts lifting one side of her mouth higher than the other, “maybe you’d like your _friend_ to join.”  
He sunk his lips into her swanned neck and kissed a path from the base to the seam of her ear, “actually I thought,” he growled, warm air tickling her lobe, “for old time’s sake, Miss Smoak.”

She stepped back from him and beamed, “I thought you might Mister Queen,” before she pealed back the tie of her deep blue coat and threaded each button through its hole until there was nothing but her hands holding the faux suede fabric it closed.

With her eyes trained on him and a coy smile flirting with her scarlet lips, Felicity opened the coat, shrugged it from her shoulders and let it drop into a puddle around her ankles, leaving her standing in nothing more than scraps of black lace masquerading as lingerie, thigh-high pantyhose clipped to a waist garter and patent black heels,

 _Fuck_.  
Oliver’s mouth gaped as his eyes widened at the thought that she must have…  
“Did you get changed at the airport?” he asked, while his tongue absently wet his lips and that thrumming erection made itself _very_ well-known again.  
“No,” she shook her he coquettishly.  
“The taxi?”  
Another swift shake of her head.  
His mouth opened, pausing over the next question, “You flew in like that?”  
“I didn’t want to waste any time,” she answered with a grin and a slight one-shoulder shrug, “So where are we doing this?”  
A sultry chuckle bled from her lips as she looked around the office full of surfaces they’d already _defiled_.

Oliver lathed his lips as he nodded towards the glistening lights of the City scape around them, “There,” he mouthed, the window, “I know how you like the view,” he finished with a cheeky grin.  
Felicity started towards the window, only clipping out a few short paces before Oliver caught her by the wrist, “I meant _finish_ there,” he charmed with eyes that had begun to mischievously shadow over.  
She lifted her chin and dropped her ear towards her shoulder while she studied the smile that grew across his features, “And where would you like to start?”  
Oliver dropped her wrist and used both his hands to loosen his tie, letting it gape around his neck before his shoulders jostled beneath his navy suit jacket, “With your naked ass on my desk while I bury my face in your slick folds and make you come with my name on your lips and my mouth on, your _lips_ ,” he answered in one, breathless sentence before he took a sharp intake of air at the end and finished with a, “If you don’t mind Miss Smoak?”

He stepped back and gestured towards his desk, which he had carefully made cleared down long before he heard the _ding_ of the elevator announcing her arrival.  
“Your office, your rules,” she smirked as she tapped her way over to the glass desk and ran a finger seductively along the lip of the same with her eyes affixed to his, “so how naked am I getting?”  
Oliver coiled a finger around her loose hair as it spilled over her porcelain shoulder, “The shoes and stockings can stay, and the glasses.”

She stepped back, unclipped the garter and shimmied her panties down her legs, carefully rolling them over the top of the stockings and her skyscraper heels before she kicked them towards him and waited. Oliver stooped and collected the thin wisp of fabric between his fingers, relishing the way they felt like velvet slipping through his pads.

“Are these new?” he asked, already knowing the answer because, when it came to her vast lingerie collection, Oliver Queen had a photographic memory. _Or perhaps it was more a tactile memory_ , he concluded as he passed the silky fabric over his lips and breathed in her scent.  
“Well, you tore the last ones,” she laughed as she dragged her nails up either side of her slender waist.

Oliver laughed with his lips closed as he remembered that night not all that long ago in her apartment in Gotham where they had only just managed to close the door before they started tearing each other’s clothes off.

While his mind was regaling, Felicity lifted herself onto the edge of his desk and used her foot to drag one of the chairs where she would once sit as his EA towards her before her hands slipped around her back and brushed over the clasp of her bra. As he moved the short distance towards her, Felicity unclipped her bra and dropped the straps from her shoulders, managing to hold the cups in place with one banded arm.

Oliver skimmed his fingers along the scalloped edge before Felicity dropped her arm to her side and let him pluck the fabric from her body. He placed her folded bra to the side of her before his fingers gently traced the sweeping curves of each breast, silently, but with an awe-bathed smile threaded across his lips.

“Your skin is so soft,” he sighed after which he dropped his lips to neck and slowly kissed a path towards her shoulder, “so smooth,” he continued to whisper against her shoulder while his thumb toyed with her nipple in teasingly-slow circles until it hardened beneath his print.

When his kisses reached the cusp of her shoulder, his mouth fell away and he slowly guided her down onto her elbows. His chin rested at the top of her breastbone while his eyes wandered up her craned neck, over her pillowed lips and dived into her vivid blue eyes.  
“Say it again,” she whispered as her fingers combed around his ears.  
He didn’t need to question what she meant, he already knew. Banishing her fears hadn’t been easy, but any time Felicity felt them gnawing at her she asked for the same thing, and Oliver gave it without question.  
_Just like he would now._  
“I love you,” he said, so softly that the last word may have only been mouthed, but it was enough – _more than enough_ and Felicity let it soak into her smile before she replied.  
“I love you too.”

He raised his head as he skated two fingers down her taut chest, relishing the way her body rose with him as though attached with strings.

He lifted one of her legs over his shoulder before he sunk down into the chair and shifted his body to the very edge of it. He raised her second leg and guided it towards the vacant chair and perched it on the very tip of the arm, stretching her wide open in a moment that made her keen breathily. He leaned closer and gently blew against her pinkish flesh.

Felicity sobbed out a moan as her head tipped backwards and her hair pooled on the glass desk behind her. He could see her luscious folds glistening with arousal even before he dipped his finger into them to feel it.  
  
“That didn’t take long baby,” he crooned as he drew a slalomed figure 8 around her clit.  
She lifted off her elbows and anchored her palms onto the desk as she watched him between her legs, spreading her folds and blowing air between them.  
“I got myself a little excited just before the plane landed,” she smiled wickedly.  
Oliver absently pushed his tongue between his lips, “How?”  
She raised two fingers and waved them at him.  
He caught her hand and swallowed those same two fingers into his mouth until he had sucked every inch of them both.

And when he was done, he gently put her hand back onto the desk and she dropped back down onto her elbows, her body now aching for what she knew he could give.

His lips met her nether lips in a soft kiss and her body blossomed for him as he gently pulled her closer to him until her rear was against his chest and he was sweeping his tongue between her folds watching as the pleasure blushed her chest an enchanting shade of pink.

She was dripping and her arousal was flowing freeing against his mouth and sinking into his cheeks while he swirled his tongue around her budded pearl. He flicked it playfully like a ping pong ball before he rolled it around with the tip of his tongue and then, when the beautiful blushing pink vines of colour from her chest had flushed all the way down to her thighs, he nipped her clit between his teeth.

Her head jolted and her thighs constricted around him while she cried out his name atop panted breaths and with wild eyes as her climax thumped ever closer like a stampeded in the lower depths of her core. Felicity could feel the explosion building, being wound tighter and tighter with every move Oliver’s tongue made and every salacious sound that he was making from between her legs.

Her toes were numb in her shoes as they clawed and curled until she couldn’t hold it off and she felt the sudden and climactic burst of her release against his face in a warm rush that coated his throat as he sucked her even deeper.

But he didn’t pause his feast, sucking and batting his tongue, knowing that the first rush wasn’t the end of it, and that beyond the thin, milky release would follow her decadently rich nectar.

He drunk her deeper into his mouth, his chin massaging her just above her anus before he dipped a finger inside her puckered hole and stroked lines down her sleek walls, while two fingers from his other hand thrust inside her pulsing walls and pumped in and out until her body was convulsing on his desk and a loud cry echoed off the four walls.

And then his mouth was filled again with her heady release. The thickened texture was warm and silky and he let its mixture of sweet and salty soak into his taste buds, until he was certain she had nothing left to give.

He let her legs down gently and she instinctively closed then over the last echoes of her climax before Oliver stood in between them and stroked his hands up her thighs until they anchored at her waist. Her limbs were limp, but she knew what he wanted when he tapped his elbow to her knee and she responded by coiling her legs around his waist moments before he lifted her from the desk.

She could see that his lips were coated in her and she couldn’t help but kiss the same from there, humming as she tasted herself with measured strokes of her tongue. He carried her quickly to the window where he carefully let her down, the city now spread out behind her.

Her feet were shaky but she managed to brace her back against the window to steady herself. It was cold and a sudden shiver careened up her spine, though it was positively tantric given how hot her body felt at that moment.

“You’re missing your view,” he cooed, his blue eyes now richly thick with desire and his brow raised with a little mischief.  
He turned her around so the city became her masterpiece to watch over before he started languidly kissing her spine. And while her body was still coming down from her climax he eased just the tip of his cock inside her.

She sighed against the window at the sensation of him spreading her tender and pulsing walls, fogging the glass for a few seconds before it dissipated. Her body lowered against the pane, making her body press into it before the chill of it against her nipples whipped them into a frenzy and tightened them almost painfully.  
  
He kissed her neck, stilling himself with just his head inside her, as he felt her walls tremble through the last tremors of her past orgasm. He lifted her hair delicately from her neck to hop a path of kisses from one side to the other as the tips of his fingers glided up her leg, feathered over the lace tops of her stocking and caressed the round of her ass while his thumb snapped the satin ties of the unclipped garter.

“Say when,” his lips smiled against her neck and his warm breath feathered out from a kiss while his other arm banded around her stomach and tilted her pelvis.

Her eyes shifted across the changing landscape of the street below them; there was something wonderfully sexual about the idea that people floors below them might look up to the dimly lit corner office and wonder just what was going on up there.

“And say how,” he added as his tongue tickled the edge of her jaw.  
“Hard, and...” she paused as she spread her stance wider to accommodate him, “now.”  
Oliver bolted into action immediately when he plunged his cock inside her without pause until he buried himself completely inside her.

With his hands tethered to her waist, she arched her back and pushed against him causing Oliver to pump his cock hard and fast, just as she had requested, into her cushioned walls, which were deliciously coated in her wetness.

The barrage of thrusts stole her breath and had her breasts skimming the cool window while her ragged moans misted the glass. Her palms felt sweaty against the pane as her fingers instinctively bent to hold herself steady against it. Every thrust sent a jolt of pleasure up her spine and every retreat had her thighs aching for the second that he wasn’t buried within her.

She looked over her shoulder at him with dizzy eyes. His brow was wet with sweat, his eyes half lidded and hazy and his lips parted with throaty gasps and moans.  
“How wet?” Felicity panted as she dropped a finger between her legs to feel the wetness pooled there.  
_It was enough._  
“Perfectly,” Oliver’s hummed word almost drowned out against her neck as he stayed oblivious to her reasons for asking until she dropped her hips and his cock slid out from inside her.  
Worry plucked his brow towards his hairline until he felt her hand between her legs gently guiding his cock between her slick folds; greasing him up.

When she was fully satisfied with her endeavours, she tipped her head over her shoulder and smiled her eyes wantonly at him, it was then he knew exactly what she was suggesting with little more than an arched brow and a suggestive wink.  
“I don't have any lube in the office,” he remarked as he dipped his own fingers into her damp sex and made a mental note to not let that oversight happen again.  
“It'll be enough,” she hummed as she teasingly danced her ass against his chest.

He leaned closer, his lips flirting with her ear and his nose brushing against her cheek, “Tell me if it's too much,” he whispered as he swirled his fingers through her arousal and dragged the silken juices up towards her tightly budded hole.

Felicity nodded as he swept his fingers around the tight puckering before easing a solitary finger inside. He stilled it at the third knuckle to get her familiar with the feeling for a few, near-breathless moments, before he added a second finger and gently stretched her.

He listened to her hums, each one tipped with pleasure, before he gently worked his fingers in and out, wetting her rim with her own spend. Once he was certain it would be enough, Oliver slid his fingers out of her tight cavity and lined up his cock, now coated in her.

She felt the moment he eased an inch inside her and her teeth clamped down on her lower lip as a husky moan bled out from behind them. The bite of anal sex was nothing new and Felicity found a certain level of pleasure behind the dull ache that stretched her around him. Her eyes lidded and her breath slowed as she lifted her body straight up and tipped her head against his shoulder while he smoothly pushed deeper.

She could feel every inch of Oliver’s cock creeping inside her. Every movement amplified and every sensation was that little bit raw, _beautifully raw,_ as her lids dropped heavily across her eyes, allowing only a slither of the cloudy night sky to remain in view and her lips parted to give way to a breathless sigh.

Oliver moaned against her temple while his eyes watered at the pleasure he got when her body gave a slight tug of resistance. It took a measure of control to not thrust, at least not yet, as he gently let her take him in, until she had him nestled completely inside.

With her back pressed tightly against his chest, his fingers dipped between her legs and languidly began to caress and stroke her thrumming sex while she pushed her ass against him and goaded him to move. His pace was slow at first, matching the strokes of his fingers around her clit, before he gradually quickened both.

He watched as her cheeks coloured a scarlet red and her teeth chewed at the edge of her lower lip before his fingers sped up until they were swarming and pleasuring her in ways that had Felicity moaning his name through his thrusts.

Her tight walls strangled him so deliciously that within minutes Oliver found himself on the verge of orgasm. His free hand moved to her breast, cupping and stroking and squeezing until he watched pleasure flood her expression.

Two fingers sank inside her while his thumb continued to tantalise and excite her clit. Stroking her slick and cushioned walls, Oliver could feel himself moving inside her rear passage, filling and thrusting until the air was filled with their salacious noises.

 _Everything_ about it was hedonistic and carnal as every sense he possessed became engulfed with thoughts of her. She was so full of him that her whole body felt weak and she instinctively coiled her arms around his neck to stop from crumbling to the ground.

“Oliver, soon,” she begged as she fought back primal tears while she walked the tightrope between pleasure and pain  
“Come first baby, come again for me,” he growled against her neck as one hand tweaked her nipple tightly and the other hand plunged three fingers inside her.

The stretch made her cry out, even after she clamped her hand across her mouth, and within seconds she fell apart around him, her whole body convulsing and constricting, including around his hard shaft.

The pressure made Oliver gulped down a moan before he too came in a flood of panted breaths and aching balls.

“I love you,” he breathed against her neck as his release flooded inside her.  
She released her lip from her teeth and soothed her tongue across it before her reply came breathless and content, “I love you too.”

* * *

  
Cleaned up and dressed Oliver waited for Felicity to finish in his executive bathroom before they would head home... _well soon,_ Oliver had something else planned first. His hands were clammy and his mouth was dry, but he was ready.

Felicity emerged from the bathroom dressed in a pair of black jeans and a chunky cable-knit sweater. Her face was clear of makeup, but for a swipe of gloss across her lips. She was almost a paradox of contrast between the woman in loosely tied _Converse_ shoes and the sex-kitten secretary that had so frequently invaded his thoughts, and even more so to the mask-wearing Megan who was entirely unashamed of her prowess.

Felicity wore every facet of herself proudly and Oliver was in love with _Every. Single. One._

“Ready to go?” she asked sweetly as she dragged her small carryon along behind her.  
Oliver simply smiled as she walked closer and couldn’t help but fix his tie that had become slightly askew while he had nervously played with it.

“Actually,” he feigned a sigh, “I have something that needs to be done first,” he finished before he picked up his Dictaphone from his desk.  
Her eyes widened and her smile grew into a chuckle, “Tell me you’re not serious?”  
“It’ll only take a minute,” he quipped with an apologetic grimace.  
“And you want me to…” her voice faded off as she looked down at the recorder in his hands before blinking back up to him with a furrowed brow.  
“What do you say, would you take a memo for me Miss Smoak?”  
If it weren’t for his wide blue eyes and the smile that lifted one side of his perfect lips higher than the other she would have said _no_ , but he possessed both of those in that moment and he was using them to his fullest advantage.

She plucked the Dictaphone from his hands and slunk into his chair, touching the wireless mouse to spark his screen to life.  
“You need to learn to type up your own memos,” she huffed playfully as she navigated through his computer.  
She pulled up _Word_ and clicked on the template before she rolled her shoulders and flexed her fingers. Once she had readied herself, she pressed _play._

 **Dear Miss Smoak,**  
A long pause.  
**Turn around.**

She looked down at the device in her hands, puzzled, before she used her toes to slowly turn the chair until she found Oliver on one knee holding up a dainty diamond ring pressed between his cumbersome fingers.

“I know I’m supposed to have a speech and it’s supposed to be wonderful and touching and it’s supposed to make you cry and me choke back tears but I realise, in this moment, right here and right now, that all I really need to say is that I love you and I want to love you for the rest of my life,” he effused, while his eyes watered and his hands trembled.  
“Oliver, are you…” she sucked back a gasp of air as her eyes blinked furiously between him and what he held – _and what that meant._  
“I don’t need a yes from you, and I don’t even have to ask now if you want to wait, but Felicity, I want to marry you, _whenever_ you’re ready,” he said with a clarity that laced every word and kept his eyes affixed to her.

Once upon a time, that moment would have given her a lump she couldn’t swallow and a tightness that would hinder every breath, but when she swallowed her throat was clear and when she breathed her chest was light.  
“Ask me,” she assured as her hands sat poised on the edge of her knees.  
“What do you say Miss Smoak, will you marry me?”  
Felicity cupped his face and kissed him through her smile.  
“Is that a yes?” he asked with one cheeky raised brow.  
“Yes,” she nodded happily, “It’s a yes.”  
“Yes?” he took her hand and slid the stunning princess-cut ring, that was as effortlessly stunning – exactly how Oliver saw her, onto her quivering hand which stilled when he feathered a kiss across the back of her knuckles.

One word.  
Three letters.  
“Yes.”

**-The End-**

Author’s Note:  
Wolfe and Ash got married, had three kids (one girl and two boys who are close in age because one of them wasn’t entirely planned) and they are currently looking at adopting two more children. Alexander has practiced carrying all three children with ease and has declared that he still has room on either leg for two more.

He’d found his anchor.

Tommy and Emilia continue their somewhat unorthodox relationship both privately and professionally with Emilia buying into Verdant. They have no plans to live sensible lives any time soon.

  
_Thank you to everyone who came along on this journey with me. This fic was equally challenging and rewarding for me to write on so many levels. For me it was a risk to write, both because of its nature (and the balance between writing into that while trying to portray it accurately and without the 50shades effect) and because of one character in particular, Alexander Wolfe – as both a love interest and as an original character._

_I will never apologise for my choice to use original characters over shoehorning a ‘verse’ character just because but I did wonder what kind of response a man, as I was determined to write him, would get. Well, now, it seems I fretted over nothing because even those who would ordinarily not see themselves loving this man – LOVE THIS MAN – and honestly, I love you for it._

_Thank you, xox._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, let me know what you think.  
> As always I write the Queen's English with a few exceptions.
> 
> Xox  
> Twitter & Tumblr  
> @someonesaidcake


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